


star-studded (not far from it)

by kirargent



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura (Voltron) Lives, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flight Instructor Lance, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Holography, M/M, Minor Adam/Shiro (Voltron), POV Alternating, Personal Growth, Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Canon Fix-It, Sparring, Team Leg Gossip Sessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-05-28 05:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19387471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirargent/pseuds/kirargent
Summary: Allura is alive and well.Mostly.They’re working on it.Keith ponders the word 'home' when he’s not too busy pining for his best friend.Lance finds validation from authority figures, and also from some little kids. Also, from Keith.In the meantime, Shiro plans a wedding.





	1. We're on a night run, boy you better hold your tongue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn’t find a fic that addressed everything I wanted it to, SO here’s my take on fixing things. There is a two year time gap between the end of canon & this, but I’m throwing out Allura’s absence during those two years as well as Lance’s ending, and Adam is alive.
> 
> Fic spoilers but I’m fine w/ that: Lance does have the Altean marks but he’s explicitly NOT suddenly Altean & the marks are TEMPORARY. He & Allura are bffs. ok.
> 
> Work is complete; I'll be posting chapters regularly.
> 
> Title & chapters from “Night Running,” Beck & Cage the Elephant.
> 
> Kate [happyleakira](http://happyleakira.tumblr.com) read through this and made it WAY better, thank u <333333
> 
> Idk if y’all’s priorities are the same as mine, but! Allura isn’t present in this chapter, but don’t fear: she gets loads of scenes in this fic starting in chap 2 :)

It’s 5:28pm Earth time, and it’s one of those Arizona nights where it’s still warm even though the November sun is about to set. They’ve been out here since dinner, perched on a fence bordering someone’s property.

It’s the middle of the Sonoran Desert, but that hasn’t stopped humanity from erecting cities and canals and citrus groves. The oranges of the grove where they’re trespassing aren’t ripe yet, but they’re getting close. The way the green of the skin bleeds into slowly darkening orange says _almost, almost, almost_.

Somewhere in the distance there’s a rustling, and a moment later, Kosmo zaps into existence in front of them, large enough to rest his chin on Keith’s knee even where he’s perched on the fence.

“Buddy!” Lance says. Kosmo immediately abandons Keith’s knee for Lance’s, a minute movement since they’re sitting side by side, knees just touching. The huge wolf gets scratched behind the ears for his effort and gives Keith a look that’s undeniably smug. Keith rolls his eyes, but he smiles.

 _I feel you, Kosmo, man,_ he thinks idly, watching Lance pat the wolf on the head and grin down at him. _Must be nice_.

“I fucking love your dog,” Lance says. He traces one fingertip up Kosmo’s nose, between his eyes, following the divot of his brow to the peak of his skull and giving him a good, full-handed scratch on the neck. Kosmo looks blissful.

Keith swallows. The side of Lance’s knee feels hot against his through two layers of jeans, but he can’t be sure if it’s real warmth or if it’s just his stupid hyper-awareness of the contact.

“Not a dog,” Keith says to Lance, watching Kosmo bat his eyes slowly closed. Then, to said dog, laughingly, as Kosmo keeps his eyes closed and sticks out his huge pink tongue until he finds Lance’s hand to give it a slurp: “Come on, man, show some self-control.”

Lance’s grin is sharp, his teeth bright in the fading light. Keith is suddenly burning up, even though he’d left his jacket in the ship. “He can’t help it. I’m just that great.”

Keith doesn’t respond to that, which is blessedly not awkward. It’s never uncomfortable with Lance to let half-completed conversations drift away in the evening air, loose ends spiraling away lazily.

Lance stops massaging Kosmo’s ears, and Kosmo snuffles into his hands until he resumes again. “I spent most of the week on Altea,” Lance says. “Prepping for that new job, you know?”

Keith turns his head only incrementally, a quarter-turn, just enough for a better view of Lance in his periphery. Lance sighs, running a hand through his hair.

“They’re gonna start me out easy. Just an aircraft safety workshop type thing for the new Altean cadet class. I got to hang out with Allura a lot this week, so that was nice.”

Yet Lance’s mouth is tight and his eyebrows are drawn.

Keith sets a hand on Lance’s knee, grounding. Lance looks at it and seems to remember to take a breath. He flashes Keith a distracted half-smile.

“We hung out in the juniberry fields a bunch, which was…great. Mostly.” He chews his lip. “I can’t stop thinking—god, it must suck so much. Altea is back, but she still can’t go home yet. Not _really_.

“I talked her ear off about how nice the grass felt and how good the flowers smelled,” Lance says, a little miserably. “But I don’t think it helped.”

Keith raises an eyebrow.

“She couldn’t smell the flowers in that hologram she used to have in the castle, you know? And now she _is_ one, so she still—she still can’t—” Lance makes a frustrated sound, shaking his head. “And I just thought, man, if I came home but I couldn’t smell my mom’s garlic knots, or feel the sun…”

Keith watches him, not saying anything, curling his free hand around the rough wood of the fence at his side.

“Talking about it sounds nice,” Keith says finally, voice low in the still night air. “I would appreciate that. If I was…how Allura is.”

Lance stares at him, eyes deeper and more unknown than the farthest away of galaxies. Then his eyes slide away, falling back onto the grove, and then down to Kosmo, who’s still demanding attention. “Do you mean…Is that Arizona, for you?”

Keith blinks and on the backs of his eyelids are stars sprawling across an open sky, framed by night-silhouette rocks only at the very, very edges of his eye-line. The dust in his throat is familiar, and so is the thickness of the warm evening air around him.

Lance clears his throat as if to speak again, to change the subject or apologize, and Keith says, “Yes.”

Lance doesn’t say anything.

“The Sonoran Desert must’ve reminded Krolia of Daibazaal,” Keith says quietly. He smiles thinly. “Now New Daibazaal reminds _me_ of _Arizona_. It’s backwards.”

Lance whistles, low and slow, which makes Kosmo’s ears twitch. “Damn. Full circle, huh?”

He says to the trees after a period of quiet: “It’s good, then? Having your apartment there?”

Keith does not say anything. Mild shadows paint the ground at the edge of the grove, and they deepen and deepen and deepen going farther in.

Keith says, “Yes.” He stares into the deep layers of the grove, picking out individual trunks in the farthest depths he can.

“Yeah,” Lance says, “okay, no. That’s not gonna do it for me.”

Keith glances at him, raising an eyebrow.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but don’t lie to me.”

Keith says, slowly, “I’m not lying?”

Lance rolls his eyes. “Dude, I fucking know you. You hesitated, and it was totally a ‘I’m about to lie to Lance’s face right now’ hesitation.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Keith deadpans.

“Look.” Lance rests his hands firmly on his knees, placing one atop the back of Keith’s hand. His palm is warm and dry. “Speaking as your right-hand man, I feel like it’s kind of an insult when you shut me out. And not just to me, but to Red, too, since he’s the one who _picked_ me for your right hand. Which is pretty cold of you, considering you two are basically old flames.”

Lance’s mouth bends up. “Get it? ‘Cause he’s the fire one?”

Keith retrieves his hand from the sandwich of Lance’s knee and palm in order to shove Lance in the shoulder. Lance leans away with it, then returns.

The warm night air feels chilly on Keith’s hand.

There are—words. They’re climbing each other and stacking up in Keith’s throat. It would be, Keith realizes, weirdly easier to open his mouth and release them than it would be to keep them inside.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this.” Keith swallows. “Things have settled down enough for me to spend more time at my apartment. And…it’s weird.” He makes a face. “The quiet is weird.”

Lance scrunches his nose. “Before we went to space you lived alone in a shack in the middle of the desert hunting cryptids.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “You’re really telling me you never wake up in the middle of the night feeling like you’re supposed to hear Pidge banging around somewhere? The quiet _never_ feels weird to you?”

Lance shrugs. “I mean, someone’s pretty much always banging something around, where I am.”

That’s right. If Lance doesn’t stay at his Garrison apartment, then he’s at his family home just a short flight away. Neither place is known for respecting quiet hours.

Keith shrugs. “It’s always dead quiet at mine. I mean, Kosmo snores. And Krolia comes over for dinner sometimes when she’s around, but it’s not like—. There always used to be people around. _Here_ , there’s always people around. ‘Banging things.’”

Lance narrows his eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re taking a dig at my family right now.”

“I was being nice!” Keith exclaims, brows drawing downwards. “I was saying I like it there!”

Lance blinks at him a few times. “Keith, dude. You’re still so bad at being nice that I _missed it_.” He grins, and Keith glares at the trees.

“Oh, shut up.”

The sun is being pulled, pulled, pulled beneath the horizon, the sky staining a red that bleeds into orange that bleeds into pink, into blue. It’s another _almost_. An ephemeral, liminal moment of not-quite, just like the almost-ripe oranges.

Lance puts his hand on Keith’s knee, squeezing once gently. Keith ignores the fire that starbursts out from his touch.

He’s a professional at ignoring the burn of Lance’s touches.

“Kosmo isn’t enough to make your bachelor pad feel full, huh?” Lance asks, voice light, half teasing. 

Keith shakes his head and doesn’t push down his smile. Fuck, Lance is good at this. He’s always ready with the perfect thing to say to guide the mood in the direction the other person wants.

“I mean, he is fucking huge,” Keith says dryly, accepting the out. “There’s barely room for _me_ in my apartment with this guy around.”

Lance grins; his cheeks lift and carry his blue triangle marks with them, closer to his eyes. “Poor baby Kosmo.” He dances his fingers under Kosmo’s chin for a scratch, and Kosmo lifts his head obligingly, eyes closed, moving into the attention with a motion like he’s nodding. Keith laughs.

“Just a little bitty lap dog, aren’t you?” Lance coos.

There is a bubbly upwelling of warmth from somewhere within Keith’s ribcage, pushing into his throat, as Lance hops down from the fence and Keith’s wolf lies happily on top of him as he flops to his back in the dirt.

Keith feels it, enjoys it, and ignores it. This friendship is a fragile plant they’ve nurtured carefully from a seedling, and it’s enough for Keith just like this. He won’t ruin it—not when he knows Lance doesn’t feel the same way.

He knows Lance. If Lance liked him, Lance would have acted on it by now. He hit on Allura when he met her; he asked out Kinkade before they even made it back from that first mission with the MFE pilots. He and Keith have been close for years now, and he’s never made a move.

Keith will be damned if he lets himself wreck their friendship because he can’t hide his fucking feelings.

Pidge is wrist-deep in an amorphous jumble of strangely organic-looking wires, tongue poking out the side of her mouth and eyes narrowed. “Stupid—goddamn—just fire _properly,_ you piece of shit neurons!”

On his back on the rumply green couch against one wall of the Holts’ workroom, Keith stops spinning his knife above him in the air. He lifts an eyebrow. “Everything okay over there?”

Pidge tosses a pair of tweezers in his general direction. “Fucking fantastic,” she spits. “Wait, shit, toss me that back?”

Keith rolls his eyes but sits up and grabs the tool from the floor, throwing it back to Pidge, who catches it and turns back to her project with a glower.

Keith’s not _exactly_ certain what she’s working on, but every time he’s seen her lately she’s been testing different theories about the whole cloning thing half the universe is currently fixated on.

Keith asks, voice low, “How’s it going with Allura and the Olkari?”

He resumes spinning his knife, pinching the tip of the hilt between his thumb and forefinger and letting gravity swing it through a downwards arc. He tosses it to complete the top of its circle before catching it again with two fingertips.

“I mean, it’s fine,” Pidge says. Her voice is subdued, at odds with the jerkiness of her motions as she tinkers. “Just—damn, I wish we knew more about how Honerva made those clones. Like, Allura’s fucking badass when it comes to all that alchemical bullshit, but.” Pidge waves her hands in the air. “It’s all so weird and magicky and intuitive. The Olkari are brilliant, but even they’re not really on Honerva’s level. I wish Allura would just let us build her a robot body, instead.”

Keith smiles thinly, watching his knife flash in the fluorescent lights at the top of its circumference. “That’s not the same.”

“I know it’s not the same—it’s way easier!” Pidge sets down the tweezers with a sharp _clack_ on the metal tabletop.

The soft upward pull retains its hold on Keith’s mouth. “Pidge? I’ve never seen you back down from a challenge.” He stops tossing his blade, catching it a last time and spinning it to curl his palm around the handle. “And you’re working with the best brains in the entire universe. You guys have got this.”

Pidge turns to give him a crooked smirk. She pushes up her glasses with one fingertip. “Well, duh,” she says. “Okay, for real, where the fuck is my brother? I _need_ that coffee.”

Keith glances to the clock above Pidge’s work table.

It’s convenient that the teludav and Pidge’s workroom are both located on the Garrison complex; Keith can shoot the shit with Pidge, get Matt to bring him an extra coffee to drop off for Shiro, and take the teludav wormhole to Daibazaal in time for work. This only works if Matt returns from his coffee run in a reasonable amount of time, though, which is…not likely. If he’s not ambushed by his mom before he escapes the house, his attention is snagged by one of a million other projects underway somewhere in the Garrison.

“All right, Pidge, I’ve gotta head out.” Keith pushes on his knees and stands, sliding his knife into its strap at the back of his waist.

Pidge makes a noise of annoyance and waves her hand to dismiss him. She turns back to her project—and then whirls around again to point an accusatory finger at Keith. “Don’t be a stranger, stranger.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”

Pidge jabs her finger more aggressively. “I mean it, Keith. I will have you kidnapped and brought to me.”

Keith lifts a hand over his shoulder in farewell as he leaves the room.

“I’ll have Acxa grab you while you sleep!” Pidge calls after him. “You’re not safe, Kogane!”

Keith smiles mildly. “I’ll come over this weekend!” he yells back, if only so he can sleep soundly at night.

He hears a faint, “Good!” as he retreats down the hall.

That first hall joins with another hall, which takes him outside, and then he enters a new building, and in it are more hallways, and then a familiar doorway, and then a very tired Shiro behind his desk.

Keith raises an eyebrow, standing in the doorway of the small office. Shiro takes in Keith’s appearance. His face displays the five stages of grief very rapidly. “No coffee?” he says.

Keith says, “If you don’t start getting more sleep I’m hosting an intervention.”

Shiro closes his eyes, frowning.

“Stop trying to look pathetic.” Keith crosses his arms, leaning on the doorframe. “Get Adam to bring you some.” This idea brightens Shiro’s face. Keith rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Tell him I said hey.”

Shiro gives him a two-finger salute, and Keith pushes away from the doorframe and turns to leave. “Will do. Come see us later, if you can.”

Keith says, “Uh huh,” by which he means ‘yeah, I’m going immediately the fuck to bed after work and I’m not touching your wedding-planning-wrecked apartment with a ten-foot pole, but I’ll see you tomorrow.’

He knows Shiro gets the gist.

Elsewhere on Earth in the general vicinity of Lance, there is a sudden spike in the number of urgent tasks for which enough hands are not available.

Lance is not slick. He’s about as opaque as a Blade uniform mask once it’s already shimmered right out of existence.

Keith admits that his apartment is too quiet—so naturally, Lance begins making up bullshit reasons to invite Keith over several times a week. It’s fucking with Keith’s work and sleep schedule.

Keith is _letting_ it fuck with his schedule.

 _Help us move Veronica’s boxes into her & Acxa’s new apartment?_ Lance asks Keith one afternoon when they’re both off work.

“I know what you’re doing,” Keith says when he arrives.

Eyebrows raised, Lance shoves a large cardboard box into Keith’s arms. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says firmly. His steady gaze challenges Keith to say more.

Keith grinds his back teeth together. He can’t call Lance out for this without admitting, _again_ , that his place feels lonely and that he’d rather be somewhere else.

“Whatever,” Keith growls, and pushes down the hallway.

Not two days later Lance messages, _You busy? My mom’s got a huge list of house repairs_ ; and then the very day after that: _Hey, you want lasagna?_

This last is not the smoothest excuse for Keith to come over.

Keith’s less worried about good excuses every time he leaves his place to be wrapped in the noisy-busy-homey feeling of company, though, so it’s fine.

(He eats more lasagna than he should and feeds another half plate stealthily to Kosmo when Lance isn’t looking, until Lance catches them in the act and laughs and tackles Keith to the floor for wasting his pasta.

Acxa is going to murder Keith if he takes another sick day. It’s completely worth it.)

Then Lance asks, _Can u come over?_ on a day when Keith’s spent ten hours outside on an obscenely hot planet carrying around gallons of water. There’s no excuse given, this time.

Keith doesn’t even shower before he takes the wormhole to Earth.

Lance’s messages direct him to the roof of his apartment building, and Keith jogs there to find Lance lying on his back, knees bent, watching the stars. His eyes are distant, even when he glances over when Keith sits down beside him. Keith hooks his arms around his own bent knees and clasps his hands, and Lance looks back to the sky.

Keith waits a few minutes. If Lance wants to talk, he will.

The shadows below Lance’s cheekbones, resting in the dip there, are faint and blueish in the light of the half moon. The shadow at the slope of his jaw under his chin is richer, more pronounced. The turquoise cresting his cheeks looks as alien as it is.

It feels to Keith like Lance is very, very far away.

He releases his hands and leans down on one elbow while extending his legs, lowering himself quietly to his back beside Lance, eyes falling up to the star-freckled blue of the sky. He automatically begins picking out familiar constellations. Aquarius. Cetus. Eridanus.

“Allura says it’s going to be fine.”

Keith raises an eyebrow.

“But what if they hate me? Like, I’ve been running Garrison missions for a couple years now, but these kids are from a different planet! What if they have a question I can’t answer, and I look like a total idiot?”

Silently, not looking down, Keith moves his arm closer to Lance’s; the concrete is rough against the side of his hand. The backs of his knuckles touch the thin skin over Lance’s wrist bone. He feels the touch, as he always does, as strongly and sharply as an electric shock, except then the feeling dulls and remains, a warm pulsing of awareness where their skin meets. As he always does, Keith ignores it.

Lance breathes out a long, long sigh. His fingers twitch; Keith can feel the movement in Lance’s wrist. Abruptly, Lance removes his hand—but he’s just moving so he can cross his forearm over Keith’s, curling his fingers around the side of Keith’s hand, palms together, his thumb hooking between Keith’s thumb and pointer finger. Keith reasons to himself that if his arm was truly, actually on fire, he would hear, see, and smell it burning in the still night air, so no, there are no literal flames.

“Allura’s right,” Keith tells him. “It’s gonna be fine.”

Lance grips his hand a little tighter. Keith finds Canis Minor, then Major.

“You’re not an idiot, Lance. You’re not going to look like one.”

Lance says, an edge of dry humor in his miserable voice, “Thanks, man. But I wouldn’t be so sure about that one.”

“I am,” Keith says. Because he is. There’s not a lot he’s sure about in this universe, but Lance being smart? Lance being lovable? Yeah. Those are two of Keith’s few certainties right there.

“You think I can get away with calling in sick on my first day teaching on a new planet?” Lance asks.

Keith rolls his eyes, but he can feel how fond his smile is. “No.”

Lance sighs. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Keith finds Perseus, Orion, Cassiopea. “Duh,” he says.

Lance’s laugh fills Keith’s ribcage with starlight.

_Oranges are ripe_ , Lance says. _You down for a super-secret mission, super-secret spy guy?_

They gather as many oranges as Lance can carry in the makeshift hammock of his shirt, and Keith steals one from the pile as they unload the fruit into the back storage compartment of Keith’s spacecraft. He peels it and tosses half of the fruit inside to Lance as they slide into the craft’s two seats. Keith’s fingers and mouth get sticky with juice before they take off, and he can see the reciprocal shine on Lance’s lips when he glances back, and something deep inside him curls up and sobs.

Keith ignores it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was nowhere to put this in the fic, but Acxa moving to Earth (she probably moved to a Garrison apartment some time before she & Veronica moved into a place together but that's not important) definitely went something like:
> 
> Acxa, approaching Keith after a random mission: “Veronica has been teaching me about Earth. I’m going to live there now.”
> 
> (Everyone is very emotional on Earth. They talk about their “feelings” a lot. Many of them want to be her “friends.” Acxa is baffled and wildly intrigued by all of this.
> 
> Also, the Garrison has nice training facilities.)
> 
> Keith, bleeding from the arm and really looking forward to going to sleep: “Uh. Wow, okay. I didn’t know you two were that serious already. Uuuuh. Do you need any help like moving your stuff, or anything?”
> 
> Acxa, shouldering a tiny backpack and balancing four knives and a pistol in her free hand, narrowing her eyes at him: “No. Why would I need help moving my stuff?”
> 
> Keith, helplessly: “Never mind. I hope you—have fun, I guess. See you tomorrow.”
> 
> Acxa shrugs and goes to meet Vero at the teludav. Every once in a while after this she and Keith will share a ship to/from Earth when Keith’s visiting Shiro or Pidge or Lance.
> 
> (She and Kinkade eventually hit it the fuck off. He helps her develop her sense of humor without laughing at her, and she helps him make Very Serious Earth Documentaries. Veronica is very proud of her for making a friend. Acxa makes her watch Every. Single. New. Documentary. There are at least two per month. Veronica is still proud but is lowkey in hell.)


	2. Better not stop till I get home, sentimental flowers don't grow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh, please, Hunk?” Allura says, clasping her hands together.
> 
> Hunk’s mouth settles in a frown. “It’s not fair! You’re a hologram! You _can’t_ fall off a cliff!”
> 
> But Hunk is all bleeding heart, and Allura’s got puppy eyes so sparkling that Lance has long suspected she uses her Altean shapeshifting ability to somehow enhance them, and twenty Earth minutes later they’re halfway up a scraggly cliffside path.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> team leg babeY!

_“HUNK ISN’T HERE RIGHT NOW!_ 😊” say the blue scrolling letters on the front door of _Hungry Hunk’s Far-Out Flavors_. _“HIS NEXT PLANNED VISIT TO ALTEA IS THE SEVENTH MOON OF THE FOURTH MOVEMENT. PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE ‘HUNK HOMING HELPER’ APP ON YOUR PREFERRED DEVICE TO FOLLOW WHERE IN THE UNIVERSE HUNK IS CURRENTLY COOKING. HAVE A GREAT DAY!_ 🤗.”

Lance has the app set to give him an alert whenever he and Hunk are in the same galaxy, but doesn’t have to rely on it today. Grinning, he jogs past the café to the entrance to the New Castle of Lions.

Having been treated to Hunk’s loving recreations of traditional Altean meals as they acclimated to life outside the colony, the Altean people were pleased to gift Hunk with a storefront on the same street as the new castle. He wouldn’t have accepted such prime real estate, but Allura and Romelle strong-armed him into it.

“Hunk!” His friends in sight, Lance closes the remaining distance at a sprint and hurls himself at a wide-eyed Hunk. “Buddy!”

Hunk says “ _Oof_ ,” but then laughs and spins him in an obliging circle.

Watching with her arms crossed, Allura’s mouth is downturned, but her eyes glitter with laughter.

The happiness ballooning in Lance’s chest makes him feel, personally, like he’s as light as a feather, but Hunk apparently disagrees, setting him down with a grunt.

Lance beams at Allura, hands on his hips. “Where to, ’Lu?”

Allura tilts her head to one side. “...The springs?” she suggests.

Hunk’s mouth pinches, his nose scrunching. “We always go to the springs.”

“Yes,” says Allura, “because they’re the best place to go!”

“They’re definitely the _highest_ place to go,” Hunk grumbles.

“Oh, please, Hunk?” Allura says, clasping her hands together.

Hunk’s mouth settles in a frown. “It’s not fair! You’re a hologram! You _can’t_ fall off a cliff!”

But Hunk is all bleeding heart, and Allura’s got puppy eyes so sparkling that Lance has long suspected she uses her Altean shapeshifting ability to somehow enhance them, and twenty Earth minutes later they’re halfway up a scraggly cliffside path. It’s crunchy and slippery like gravel, but it’s made instead of small, jagged pieces of pink crystal.

“Ooooohhh,” says Hunk. “Ooooohhh, shouldn’t have looked down. Shouldn’t have looked down. Nope, that was a mistake. Why is this trail so _narrow_? Why is this trail _so_ narrow. Allura, _why_ did they make this trail so narrow!?”

Allura hums thoughtfully, walking along with her hands folded behind her back and her feet an inch above the ground. “I don’t know, Hunk. I suppose it would be nice if it was a tad wider.” The drone projecting her hologram floats above them, bobbing gently up and down.

Hunk explained to Lance how the whole thing worked, once. He’d dismantled the Blue Bayard and used its intrinsic connection to its paladin’s essence to form a connection to Allura’s consciousness, stuck in the Blue Lion on some in-between plane, and used the connection to let her craft a holographic body she could control. He explained the details of _how_ he actually did that shit, but it made Lance’s head hurt so bad that he’s since blocked it from his memory.

“Come on, buddy.” Lance sticks out a hand. “You got this. Almost there.”

Hunk makes another moan-y sound like he might throw up, but he takes Lance’s hand and manages not to look down again the rest of the way up.

“Oh,” Allura breathes when they reach the plateau.

Peach-pink crystal sprawls before them, chipped in places and leaving those little gravelly chunks to texture the rocky surface. The zyo-crystal springs themselves well up here and there, varying sized patches of turquoise against the pink crystal. The water looks nice, but Lance knows better than to be tempted to go swimming.

Like most everything on Altea, the springs are beautiful, but a little bit dangerous. The water is glassy-smooth for the moment, but its temperature varies rapidly and extremely. It can be calm one second and boiling the next.

Lance would like to say he learned not to try to swim here when Allura first told him about the chaotic nature of the springs’ temperature and not by trial and error after he already theoretically knew better, but yeah, that would be a lie.

Allura’s drone zips ahead of them, the little white and turquoise Altean-tech sphere completely silent as it flies. Her hologram jogs ahead across the plane of pink crystal, heading for her favorite spot. A large boulder near one of the springs has a bench-like shape nestled in its side, smoothly indented into its curvature. Allura perches on one end of it, beaming as Hunk and Lance follow.

“Thank you, Hunk, for coming,” she says graciously as Hunk sits beside her and Lance plops down on Hunk’s other side. “It’s so beautiful here.”

Hunk smiles. “It really is,” he admits. “Hey, speaking of beautiful.” He wiggles his eyebrows at Allura. “Romelle’s gonna be on Altea for a while!”

Lance isn’t sure how Hunk managed to make the hologram so accurate that Allura’s cheeks flush bright pink, but boy, do they ever. Lance grins.

“Is she, now?” Allura asks disaffectedly.

“Yep! Coran came up with some more traditional practices she hasn’t learned yet, so she’s gonna spend some time here while he teaches her. She’ll probably open the café for a few days while she’s here, too.”

Allura gazes out over the large spring, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “When’s she scheduled to arrive?” Her tone is so far from casual that Lance can just barely tell it’s what she was striving for.

“Dunno yet,” says Hunk. “Next week?”

Allura presses her lips together. “And how long will she be staying?” she asks the water.

Lance leans forward around Hunk to give Allura a shit-eating grin. “Why so curious, ’Lura?”

“I merely wish to be prepared, in order to offer her the utmost hospitality,” she says, sniffing and turning up her nose.

“Ri-ight,” says Hunk.

“Uh huh,” says Lance. “Sure. Totally.” He’s still grinning.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Allura says, shooting him a fierce glare. “Hunk, I heard your new project is almost out of the development stage?”

“Oh!” Hunk’s eyes brighten. “Yeah, we’ve got like one more round of testing, and then she’s going live! It’s gonna be so cool. I’ve gotten to meet engineers from so many parts of the universe. It’s been amazing.”

The new project is an additional tab for Hunk’s app, descriptively titled “Need an engineer? Don’t worry: Hunk is here!” Customers can enter a detailed description of their problem, including any helpful pictures, and Hunk will get to review all the cases and either schedule a visit, or have his algorithm match customers with Hunk-approved local engineers.

“That’s gonna be so awesome, bud,” Lance says, and Allura nods.

Hunk smiles. “Thanks, guys. Oh, snap—you had your first class on Altea, didn’t you, Lance? How’d it go?”

A slow smile curves Lance’s mouth. “Shit, man. Really good. The kids were great. They’re really interested in Earth stuff, so we’re hyped to do even more collab stuff with Altea.”

Allura, Shiro, Sam Holt, and even Commander Iverson have been pushing for more Garrison-Altean collaboration, and in the two years since the end of the war, New Altea has become established and organized enough for them to really get started on the effort. Since Earth and Altea are already two of the most connected planets in the universe, it’s a logical beginning point for more interplanetary, intergalactic cooperation and integration.

Lance is lobbying for Altean-Garrison classes and tech to be branded with the portmanteau “Allison.” He thinks it’s cute, but it hasn’t really caught on yet. Just wait, though. If they keep letting Lance teach classes on both Earth and Altea, he’ll get this one off the ground yet.

“I’m telling you; those kids were crazy for me. Thanks for the cheek decorations by the way, ’Lura.” Lance taps the blue marks on his cheekbones with his index fingers, grinning. “They were a total hit. You shoulda seen their faces when I told them I wasn’t actually Altean. So confused. Absolutely adorable.”

Allura grins, her nose crinkling as she laughs. “I didn’t even think about that! What did you tell them?”

“I told ’em the marks were just a present from my friend. She’s very, very magical, and we’re very, very good friends, so she was able to give them to me.” He winks at Allura, and her smile only gets brighter. “I told them I’m actually from a place called ‘Cuba,’” Lance says, “and their eyes went soooo big. They’re like ‘what’s _Cuba_?’”

“Aww,” says Hunk, bumping Lance’s shoulder with his own. “That’s so cute.”

Lance shakes his head, grinning. “Dude, yeah. You’ve got no idea.”

He told the kids how Cuba is a magical place on his home planet, Earth, where they had water and sunshine and “rain,” which is sort of like rain on Altea, except on Earth it’s just little tiny drops of water that don’t even hurt you at all. Actually, it’s super nice!

By the time they’d gone through the basic flight safety curriculum and Lance was ready to leave for the day, he’d had at least five Altean children hanging onto his legs, asking to go on a field trip to Cuba so they could see Earth rain and try “surfing.”

Lance laughed and disentangled himself, a warm, happy glow suffusing his heart, and promised to talk to their teacher to see if he couldn’t work something out. He can’t wait to be invited back for another class.

As they watch, the pale turquoise water stretching in front of them begins, slowly, to bubble. In a matter of minutes, it’s boiling hard, gurgling happily with white, diaphanous clouds of steam swirling up from the surface. The white haze heightens the surreal view, blurring the edges of the pastel pinks and teals of the landscape. Man, Altea’s beautiful.

The steamy air smells of water and dust, thick at once with wet and dry. Chips of crystal grate against the ground under Lance’s foot when he scrapes it idly back and forth.

He’s struck by the tactile joys of this place. The earthy smell; the warm damp of the steam; the feeling of crystal crunching beneath his shoes.

The turquoise glow of Allura’s projector drone is fuzzy through the steam. Lance looks away from it and clears his throat.

“I tell you guys I caught Vero and Acxa making out on one of those benches outside the apartments the other night?”

Hunk snorts. “No, but that sounds like them.”

Lance grins. “Dude, I’m never letting Veronica live this one down. There I was, just heading home from Adam and Shiro’s, and boom—sister full-on making out in public.”

Allura laughs.

“Oh, yeah, Shiro.” Hunk bumps Lance’s shoulder again. “Remind me to send the care package I made him back to the Garrison with you.”

“Will do.”

“How’s he doing?” Allura asks. “I haven’t seen him in some time.”

“Pretty good,” Lance says. “He’s still going to therapy regularly. He and Adam are still really solid. Honestly, I think worrying about something as non-universe-threatening as wedding planning seems like it’s really good for him.” He smiles. “Although by the way he talks some days, you’d think wedding planning was just another universe-wide crisis.”

They all laugh.

“Dang, I’m excited,” Hunk says, shaking his head. “Shay and Romelle did another test of our cake design the other day. I think we’ve just about got it.” He sniffs.

“Aww, buddy. Are you getting teary over the cake?”

“No,” says Hunk, his voice thick.

“Coran cried for what must’ve been three of your Earth hours when Shiro asked him to officiate,” Allura says, smiling slyly.

Lance grins. “Okay, but Hunk probably cried for four when Shiro asked us to be groomsmen.”

“Grooms _people,_ thank you,” Allura says primly. Her arm rises and then falls again rapidly, a cut-off moment like she’d been about to reach around Hunk to punch Lance in the arm. “And _you_ cried as well, I’ll remind you.”

“So did you!” Lance exclaims, which is a lie. Allura snorts, not bothering to defend herself, since all three of them know how it went down. Allura accepted gracefully, and Hunk and Lance hugged each other and blubbered.

“Keith told me he’s been trying to get Adam and Shiro to let Kosmo be the ring bearer,” Lance says, blatantly changing the subject.

Hunk laughs, and Allura smiles widely. “And how is that going for him?” she asks.

“Not great,” says Lance. “That’s exactly why I got an earful about it.” All three of them laugh again.

Over the next two minutes, the spring stops boiling. It takes longer for the surface to return to its mirror-like calm, and longer still for the steam to dissipate, lingering in the still air.

They hang out and catch up for another few hours, watching the water and the set of Altea’s first sun and the rise of the second, and Lance doesn’t slip up and go for a hug when he says goodbye to Allura, so it’s pretty darn close to perfect. It’s as close as it gets while Allura still doesn’t have a body, at least.

“Oo,” Lance says, sliding into a seat at one of the Garrison cafeteria tables, “two of my favorite people! And also, my sister.”

Veronica closes her eyes, looking supremely tired. “Afternoon, Lance.”

Kinkade gives him a thin smile.

Shiro’s face looks like it doesn’t know what to do.

“Hunk sent a box of goodies for you, Shiro,” Lance tells him. “I can bring it over to your office after lunch.”

Shiro gives him a grateful nod, then returns his attention to his sandwich. “Thanks, Lance.”

Lance bobs his head agreeably. “So, the Altea class went awesome,” he says, digging a spoon into his peas. “And now I’ve got a request for you, and for you.” He points with his spoon and Kinkade, then at Shiro. “Actually, I’ve got two requests for you, Shiro.”

Shiro takes a bite of his sandwich, looking wary. Lance grins. He’ll let Shiro stew in fear of what he’s gonna ask, for a little.

“So, ’Kade,” he says, twisting to lean past Veronica and talk to Kinkade, seated on Veronica’s other side. “Are you willing to help me slap together some footage of Varadero? There’s still some more shots I wanna get, but the Altean cadets were really excited about Earth, and I wanna show them a little, like, ‘come to Cuba’ trailer thing.”

“Oh, you know I’m down,” says Kinkade, not even looking up from his lunch tray.

“ _Nice_ ,” says Lance. “Okay, next victim.” He aims his spoon across the table at Shiro. “First off. You think you could put in a good word for me to get this weekend off? I know there’s that Ulippa System trip coming up, but Hunk’s doing a short weekender trip with his traveling restaurant and I wanted to tag along.”

Shiro looks over his sandwich at Lance. “I don’t know, Lance. Coran thought you would make a valuable addition to the mission this weekend. There’s a couple planets hesitant to join the coalition, and you’re always good at smoothing things over.”

“Coran is a traitor.”

Shiro rolls his eyes.

“Can’t someone else go?” Lance asks.

Shiro shrugs. “Do you know if Hunk sent any peanut butter cookies?”

“He did, yeah.”

Shiro nods his appreciation. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Lance pumps his fist. “Hell yeah.”

“I know Iverson wants you on this one too though, so no promises, we clear?”

Lance rolls his eyes. “I’ve always hated that guy.”

There’s a note of warning in Shiro’s voice. “ _Lance_.”

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Man, all I ever used to want was that guy’s approval, and now it’s gonna cake-block me this weekend!”

“Lance,” says Veronica thinly, “please just shut up.”

Lance makes a face at her. “Oh, go be indecent in public somewhere.”

Shiro snorts, and Veronica turns red. Even Kinkade manages a slight smile.

“Anyway, Shiro,” Lance says through a grin. “I was kinda hoping you could also put in a good word for me for like…doing some more stuff on Altea?” He glances down at his peas. “I mean, the safety workshop went really well, and I’ve been looking over some of the stuff on the curriculum, and honestly, I know a lot of the stuff already. I’m familiar with their ships and flight patterns and stuff, too, so really, I think it makes sense.” He shrugs, something twisting in his stomach. He puts on a smirk. “Plus, the kids _loved_ me. You wouldn’t wanna deny them more Lancey-Lance, would ya?”

Shiro looks exhausted. Lance wonders if he’s getting enough sleep. He says, at odds with his beleaguered expression, “Sure, Lance.”

Lance blinks at him. “Really?”

Shiro shrugs, taking a bite of his sandwich. He chews slowly. “Sure. Why not? You’re already the go-to when we’re gonna be teaching new equipment. And you know more than most of us about Altean culture. If you want to do more teaching there…Why not?”

Lance is legitimately touched. Pride blossoms open in his chest, warm.

What he says is, “ _Hell_ yeah! I’m the best! I’m the go-to guy! Take that, Keith!”

Shiro blinks at him tiredly. “Keith isn’t even a flight instructor.”

Lance sticks out his tongue.

Veronica slaps him in the back of the head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter is just pure klance to balance out the lack of it in this chapter :-)


	3. Rhythm and reeling, this feeling; I'm riding the sound through the ceiling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith smirks. “What’s wrong?” he echoes. “In too deep?”
> 
> Lance bares his teeth. He springs forward. Keith blocks the high arc of the red blade.
> 
> Lance redirects and slashes low.
> 
> It’s almost too fast. Keith jumps back, light flashing from the blade inches from his shins.
> 
> He blinks at Lance. Lance’s grin is shark-like. “I think I’m okay. But thanks for the concern.” He winks.

Lance spends a week teaching and then the weekend traveling around with Hunk.

Keith is kept busy with work. Keith will be busy with work for a long, long, _long_ time.

The end of empiric occupation left hundreds of thousands of civilizations in varying states of disarray, improperly equipped with the trade deals and export systems necessary to rebuild and to sustain their communities. There’s a lot of stop-gap work to be done, distributing water and food and repairing damaged structures. Then there’s managing the resource distribution: requesting money or resources from stable civilizations; storing resources before distribution; maintaining ships for transport.

It’s a begging-for-money-so-that-people-can-literally- _survive_ diplomatic meeting that Keith is returning from when he’s ambushed in the hangar by an Ezor with very hyperactive eyebrows.

“I didn’t know you had a _date_ tonight!” She folds her hands behind her back, following after him on light feet as he slowly circles the small spacecraft he’s just exited, checking routinely for any damage.

“A what?”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” she demands. “You’re finally having him over, and you didn’t tell us?”

Keith’s eyebrows lower. “Having who over?” he asks, turning away from the ship. “Tell you what?”

He reaches for a concealed snap on the inside of his Marmora formal jacket, ready to do away with its stiff fabric for the day.

“ _Lance!_ Why didn’t you tell us he was coming for _dinner?_ ”

Keith opens his mouth, fingers stilling on the still-clasped button inside his jacket. He says, “What?”

And Ezor says “Oh, _oh!_ ” like she gets it, which is good, Keith thinks. At least one of them should. “You didn’t know he was coming over, did you?” she asks gleefully.

“Uhh,” Keith manages.

Ezor’s eyes sparkle. It’s a look that makes unease ripple down Keith’s spine.

“Drop it, okay?” he tells her firmly.

She bounces on her toes. “No way!”

Keith grits his teeth, popping the snap on his jacket and worming out of the stiff shoulders. He shoves the jacket at Ezor merely to give her something to do other than pester him. “Hang that up for me, will you?”

She pushes it right back into his hands. “Not your maid!” she says brightly. She punches him in the shoulder far harder than necessary. “Now, go get ‘im!”

Holding his expression blank but wadding the jacket into a tight ball in his hands, Keith leaves the hangar to retrieve his parked speeder and head home.

He drives home motherfucking _fast_ , which Kolivan would say sets a bad example, but Keith could not care less. His brain feels surrounded by a gray, sticky cloud after the hours of niceties and mild expressions and careful persuasive words. He has a tired headache right between his eyes.

New Daibazaal came into being kitted out with towering cities, sprawling suburban areas, and buildings suited for habitation and for business and for recreation. Everything is tall and matte-gray, spidered with delicate patterns of glowing purple lines. The cool tones contrast with the redness of Daibazaal’s rocky terrain. It’s beautiful, in an inexplicable way. It’s not the Sonoran Desert, and it’s not a ship floating in cold outer space; it’s a weirdly fused in-between that just _works_ , that feels right.

Organizing Galra citizens from across the universe into living quarters in these empty, pre-built cities was a monster of a headache, and Keith will never stop being grateful that Coran, Krolia, Kolivan, Shiro, and countless others worked so hard to coordinate the effort.

This whole process is how Keith came to own an apartment on the outskirts of the capital city. New Daibazaal did not, it turned out, come with a premade shack out in the middle of the desert. Keith still might build one, he thinks—if he ever has the free time.

He leans over the handlebars of his speeder, a sleek red thing that he loves more than anything else he owns. The streets widen and the traffic thins as he heads to the edge of the city, weaving between tall gray buildings on a gray, purple-lined city road.

When he passes a final row of tall buildings at the edge of the heart of the city, the landscape opens in front of him: red, red rock with vein-like traceries of road connecting the short buildings that dot the land. Keith abandons the road as soon as he’s out of the main city, pushing his speeder faster as he careens across open desert, half standing on the speeder.

The generated wind grabs at his hair and stings his eyes as he shoots across the land, his exhales just barely leaving his lungs before being left far, far behind. His head finally begins to clear. At this speed the wind feels cold and makes him shiver, but it’s a sensation that grounds him in his body.

By the time he skids to a stop in front of his building, he’s wearing a slight smile.

Lance is waiting on the top step of the stairs leading to Keith’s apartment, and stands when he sees Keith at the bottom. He grins at Keith. “Hey, man!”

Keith waves at him, jogging up the steps. Lance draws him in by the hand as soon as he reaches the top and pulls him into a one-armed bro hug. Lance’s hand, arm, and chest are warm through Keith’s Marmora suit.

They part, and Keith notices a luridly pink box in the hand Lance didn’t use to grab Keith’s. A line drawing of Hunk’s face smiles up at them from the top of the box, surrounded by other, smaller cartoon faces: Romelle, and Shay, and Vrepit Sal himself.

“Tell me you brought those Altean doughnut hole things,” Keith says, unlocking his front door with a palm.

“Keith!” Lance follows him into the kitchen to the left off the hallway, placing the box on the table and a hand over his heart. He says, pained, “Would I forget your favorite?”

Affection sizzles in Keith’s lungs, and he smiles. “No. I guess you wouldn’t. How’d the class go?”

Lance’s eyes positively sparkle. “Great. I’m a kickass teacher. You’re talkin’ to a flight instructor who’s now revered on multiple planets, I’ll have you know.”

Keith punches his shoulder. “Fucking told you.”

Lance shoves him into the wall. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t be so cocky. It’s more attractive on some of us than others.”

Keith rolls his eyes and hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go change. Make yourself at home.”

Lance grabs a gray metal chair, sitting on it backwards and drawing the pastry box closer across the table. “Don’t take too long,” he warns, eyeing the box.

Keith’s grinning as he leaves, proceeding down the hall to his room.

The room is smallish and gray just like the rest of the apartment, but Keith’s sheets are a rich red like the rocks outside, and the gray walls are half-concealed by pictures he’s secured with tape. Many are of Adam and Shiro, and some feature various combinations of himself, his mother, and Kosmo.

He has a few of Pidge: one with her arm around a vaguely humanoid robot, her grin wild; three where she’s contorted her face into weird expressions for the camera.

He has some of Hunk: one where he’s bracketed by Romelle and Shay, their grins radiating more happiness than any other group of people in the universe could manage; one where he’s saluting the camera, face serious, green food goo stuck in his hair; one where he and Pidge have their tongues out, eyes scrunched closed, hands fanned out by their ears.

There are a few of himself and Lance: there’s him, laughing, with Lance smirking beside him, arm around his shoulders; there’s one of Lance hugging Kosmo and beaming at the camera, Keith only half in the picture; there’s one that Shiro took where Keith is drooling on the arm of Shiro and Adam’s couch and Lance, seated upright at the end of the couch where Keith’s feet are, is mid-snore.

He has one group shot from the time they’d all had dinner one year after saving the universe—even magical-quintessence-hologram-Allura is in it, smiling impossibly wide.

Other pictures of Allura are mostly pre- semi-permanent-astral-projection Allura: snapshots of her face the first time they all bonded over a food fight; Allura, posing with a dazzling smile and two mice atop her head; Allura’s murderous glare of a morning face.

Desire to have her back for good tugs in Keith’s stomach.

Keith’s bayard also has a place hanging on the wall, usually passed over for his more convenient Marmora knife. There’s a shelf that displays various rocks and crystals and small pieces of artwork from planets from around the universe, and a row of small hooks for the miscellaneous medals Krolia insisted he hang up, and a peg holding his jacket, which he grabs and pulls on as soon as he’s peeled out of his suit and replaced it with a black t shirt and jeans.

Lance is stuffing his face by the time Keith returns to the kitchen, looking only mildly guilty when Keith reappears. “These’re so good,” he says defensively, muffled through a full mouth.

“Yeah, I _know_ ,” Keith says, taking a seat and yanking the box to his side of the table. He curls an arm around it as he selects one of the small, round pastries, feeling like a dog baring its teeth over a kill.

Lance lifts his hands in the air in a posture of surrender. “Have at it, man. I’ve had enough. Between my mom’s cooking _and_ Hunk’s, I’m totally losing my fighting edge.” He leans back in the chair to pat his stomach.

Keith stares at him with one eyebrow raised, chewing the pastry slowly. For all Lance’s twenty-plus years, he’s still a stick-figure of a boy, too long for himself, only barely too substantial to be called scrawny.

“Oh, please,” Keith says, swallowing his food. “You look fine, Lance.”

Lance’s expression doesn’t change, not really, but something in the pit of Keith’s stomach makes him certain that a smirk is coming.

“You do basic training at the Garrison,” Keith says, like he’s explaining himself. “And—we’re done saving the universe. I don’t know if you got the memo. You can do whatever you…” He gestures vaguely at Lance, frowning. “You know. Fuck body standards, and all that.”

He picks up another doughnut hole and ponders it intensely. What the _fuck_ is his mouth saying? And with whose fucking permission?

“Right,” Lance says slowly. “Uh huh.” He sounds unimpressed. “So, anyway. That’s great and everything, but I meant, like. I don’t really _want_ to get out of practice. Training’s fun when you’re not under pressure to save the world, and shit. I don’t wanna stop feeling like a badass motherfucker, personally. Plus, Veronica _and_ Acxa work out in the Garrison rooms, so I really can’t let myself slip.”

Keith blinks at his doughnut hole. He bites it in half, squinting at Lance.

Lance watches him steadily. “Whaddaya say, Samurai?”

Yes, there’s the smirk.

Keith matches it. “Oh, you’re _on_.”

It’s just the two of them in a Garrison training room, facing each other a few feet apart while the cadets are busy getting breakfast. Keith grasps his knife, swallowing hard. That. That is a—

The red bayard just turned into a—

Lance has a—

“What _,_ ” Keith hisses, “the _motherfuck_ is THAT?”

Inter Keith immediately, for he is dead. Deceased. Over and out, Keith’s never gonna be heard from again.

Keith could cut himself on Lance’s smirk. “What, this old thing?” Lance spins the sword in a sweeping circle, his smirk getting wider.

Keith’s brain bounces around in his skull like a pinball. His stomach turns. His palm is sweaty on the grip of his own knife.

“When the hell did _that_ happen?” Keith snaps.

“I don’t know.” Lance shrugs. “A while ago, I guess. It’s an Altean broadsword. Classic red paladin weapon, apparently, did ya know that?” He couldn’t look more smug if he was being awarded a medal for saving the goddamn universe. Which he has been—Keith was there. He’s definitely smugger now.

“Well.” Keith’s mouth is dry. He feels like he’s in the Sonoran without water. “Come on.” He finds a smirk somewhere within himself. “Let’s see how you handle that thing.”

The overhead lights glint from the pale edges of the sword. Lance’s smile is just as bright and sharp.

Keith takes one step forward, letting his knife extend into a full sword blade as he goes. Lance’s smile drops into determined focus. He knocks Keith’s sword away from his chest.

Keith backs off, assessing Lance’s posture, his footwork, his grip on his sword. His eyes, so practiced at pinpoint aim, now scan the bigger target of Keith’s whole body, visibly watching for a misstep or an unprotected side.

He looks like he knows what he’s doing, to be honest. If Keith had expected an uncertain grip on a new weapon, a clumsiness fighting in a new style, he was way off.

“What’s wrong?” Lance is smirking again. “Scared I’ll beat you with your own weapon?”

His eyes glitter with amusement. For a moment, they’re less calculating.

Keith lunges.

Lance catches the strike with his own blade—barely. The hit jars Keith’s arm. Lance’s eyes are round.

Keith steps back, lowering his sword. Adrenaline lightens his steps and rushes audibly in his temples. Lance’s mouth is a thin, focused line.

Keith smirks. “What’s wrong?” he echoes. “In too deep?”

Lance bares his teeth. He springs forward. Keith blocks the high arc of the red blade.

Lance redirects and slashes low.

It’s almost too fast. Keith jumps back, light flashing from the blade inches from his shins.

He blinks at Lance. Lance’s grin is shark-like. “I think I’m okay. But thanks for the concern.” He winks.

Keith rolls his eyes even as he raises his blade. He steps forward on his right foot, but shifts fast to his left. He tosses his sword to his left hand. He slashes up at Lance’s chest. Sword tip kisses armor—there’s a jolt up Keith’s forearm as Lance shoves him away before he can make the strike mean something.

Keith doesn’t let him recover.

He pushes, hard. Lance blocks every blow. It doesn’t matter if Keith switches hands trying to catch him off guard. It doesn’t matter if he can see Lance’s arm shake with the effort of the block. He catches every one.

Keith still pushes him backwards across the room.

Beating Lance in a swordfight is…a surprising challenge. He’s quick. His balance is good. He’s too perceptive for Keith to startle him. He’s just strong enough to fend off attacks and to give back fiercely.

Sweat tickles Keith’s temples. His breath comes fast.

He has Lance’s back near the wall. There’s tension through every line of Lance’s body. His eyes are restless, searching for the next attack.

Keith licks his lips, tasting salt. “You’re not bad, for a gunman.”

Lance breathes hard. “Yeah? Well, you’re not bad, for an edgelord— _Hey!_ ” he yelps, back hitting wall as he jumps away from the swipe to his abdomen.

Keith’s had years more practice, is the ultimate thing. If he’s shaking, exhausted, sweat in his eyes—shit, if he’s beaten six ways to hell and back—he still knows how to introduce his sword to someone’s neck.

“Fuck—” says Lance. He dances a quickstep of evasion, turning his side to the wall.

Keith strikes at an angle. He taps Lance’s shoulder with his blade before Lance pushes it away. He nearly gets a solid stab to Lance’s torso. Lance blocks, and Keith hooks a foot behind Lance’s ankle, braces himself, and tugs hard.

Lance’s armored back hits the floor with a heavy clack. His eyes are wide. Keith holds the tip of his blade delicately over Lance’s throat, watching his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows.

The training room is a void of silence broken only by twinned heavy breathing.

Keith lowers his sword. “ _How,_ ” he asks, offering Lance a hand up, “did you get so good at that?”

Lance accepts, sweeping back sweaty hair with his other hand. “Allura, actually.” He lets his bayard shrink down with a flash, tossing the triangular grip piece back and forth from one hand to the other. His eyes follow the bayard, and Keith’s eyes follow him.

Lance pauses his harsh breathing to lick his lips. He catches the bayard and holds it. “I mean, when I first…She taught me how to use it. I didn’t know how. And you weren’t really around for a while there, so.” As he speaks, his eyes focus near but never directly on Keith. He stares at the room past Keith’s ear, then at Keith’s right shoulder, then just into space, vaguely upwards and to the left. He clears his throat and shrugs, the movement small and careful.

“Oh,” Keith says. His heart rate is trying to ease up after the exertion, but uncertainty keeps it racing. He doesn’t want to misstep, here. But it’s not like he’s good at this. “Well.” Every word is an untested foothold that might give and send him crashing. “She taught you well.”

Under his black bodysuit, Lance’s collarbones rise and fall with his chest; Keith’s eyes can’t seem to focus on anything else.

Lance wrinkles his nose and blinks rapidly a few times, gazing up at the lights. “Yeah,” he says. He sniffs. “Yeah, no, definitely.” He sets his jaw; his eyes are steady when they fix on Keith. “Come on.” He bends his knees, and his bayard lengthens again with a flare of light. “Let’s go again. I’ve totally got you this time.”

 _You totally do_ , Keith thinks helplessly, snagged on the sharp hook of that intense stare.

Keith says, smirking, “Uh huh.” He gestures, _come here_. “Money where your mouth is, Lance. Come on.”

Lance comes at him with that broadsword and that broad grin, and god, Keith is drowning in him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [follow my voltron tumblr if u want idk man](https://lesbianlura.tumblr.com)


	4. Killing the moonlight with daylight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allura departs, but Lance hangs around for dinner. No need for Keith’s apartment to be empty when Lance has a perfectly good stomach and nowhere else he’s gotta be.

Sparring becomes a Thursday morning thing.

Keith already visits Lance’s or Lance’s family’s place for dinner whenever Lance can come up with a halfway decent excuse to get Keith out of his own quiet apartment, but it’s nice having a regular appointment on the books.

Lance does brunch with Hunk every other weekend, and video games with Pidge and Matt every Tuesday night, and goes to see Allura every Saturday he has off. It’s nice to have Keith on his calendar.

He just saw Keith for Thursday sparring, but here he is the very next day, returning to Daibazaal.

“Keith!” he calls, climbing down from a small Altean-Garrison fusion vehicle. (Or the Allison vehicle, if you will.) Behind him, Allura’s hologram floats eerily down the steps. She won’t stop doing that shit, even though it’s creepy, because she says it’s more convenient than bothering with each individual step.

Keith’s surrounded by his lieutenants, his jeans and red jacket distinctive beside their uniforms.

“Hey, Lance,” he says, turning. “Allura. Good to see you.”

Lance jogs over immediately. “I’m so excited! Let’s go!” He hooks an arm through Keith’s to pull him along, his other arm rising in Allura’s direction before he jerks it back to his side. She smiles at him sadly, and he looks away.

“I was promised a tour of the city before the meeting,” he says, “and I will not be denied.”

The universe, it turns out, is huge. Garrison missions typically send him out to the fringes of the universe, rather than to major political hubs like Daibazaal that are already being handled by other Voltron Coalition members. Outside Keith’s apartment, Lance has spent next to no time on this planet since the end of the war.

“What do you guys want to see first?” Keith asks, taking the lead as they leave the hangar and enter halls that are unfamiliar to Lance. Keith guides them to an exit.

“Hmmmm. I heard your downtown is really starting to come together.” Lance elbows him without unlinking their arms. “But you’re the tour guide, Keith. Shouldn’t this be your job?”

Keith raises a brow, pushing open an exterior door and holding it for Lance. “You think I have a tour planned for you? You’ve met me. I don’t plan.”

Lance chuckles.

“I’d rather hoped to see Daibazaal’s memorial garden,” Allura says, walking behind them with her feet half an inch above the floor.

So to the capital city’s downtown they go, after only the briefest of interludes arguing over who gets to drive Keith’s speeder.

Keith drives, and Lance straddles the speeder behind him, and Allura perches daintily on the very back of the seat. Conveniently, she’s a hologram, and doesn’t have to worry about hanging on. The projector drone cruises through the air behind them, keeping pace with the speeder until Keith brings it to a stop.

Allura and Lance look around while Keith locks up the speeder. Lance spots a plant-draped archway nearby that he’s seen before in pictures.

“I’ve been hearing about this place for _ages._ ” Lance's gait is quick as he approaches the entryway. “It’s only been open a few months, right? Coran was so excited when it was finally done.”

Allura nods. “It’s all he talked about for a full movement.”

The memorial garden is more than just a showcase of the natural beauty of Daibazaal’s native flora. Among the plants are nestled elaborate statues of carefully selected, prominent figures from many cultures whose lives were lost in the war. It’s a physical representation of New Daibazaal’s commitment to playing a role in a peaceful universe.

Keith smiles. “Yeah. We couldn’t have done it without him.”

Lance pauses in the entrance arch, looking around with wide eyes.

The arch is constructed from red rock and gray metal, the purple-striped metal overtaking the natural rock about waist height and rising to form a graceful U shape. A climbing plant spiders up the archway, deep purple stems the same shade as the purple plasma glow of most of Galra technology. The stems bear wide purple leaves that spill out over the archway, a beautiful alien blend of rock and tech and greenery.

Purplery?

“Woah,” says Lance, reaching out to touch an outstretched leaf with his fingertips. The leaves are huge; this one is at least twice the size of his hand.

“I’d tell you the name,” Keith says, “but I can’t remember it.”

Lance snorts. He pulls his hand back, looking around some more.

“Ambicor plants,” Allura says, sounding pleased. Her eyes skate across the wide leaves, bright and curious. “It means ‘round heart.’ See the shape of the leaves?” Her hand half rises as if to touch one. She replaces it at her side.

“Come on,” Keith says, noticing the aborted motion. He pushes past Lance into the garden, starting down a gray metal path. “Anything in particular you want to see?”

Lance shrugs, sticking his hands in his jeans pockets at he follows. “’Lura? Anything you wanted to see?”

The hologram of his friend bites her holographic lip, her image shimmering faintly in the sunlight as she walks beside them. “It’s silly,” she says. “But I wished to wait until I could be here physically before seeing my father’s statue. Other than that, I don’t mind what we see.”

Lance watches his boots meet metal, the garden flowing away in red rocky gravel and strange colored plants beyond the gray pathway. “That’s not silly.”

Keith takes a right turn when they reach a fork. “It’s not,” he agrees. “Here, I’ll show you my favorite plants.”

They follow Keith through the garden, past human-height, black-trunked trees that look as harsh as the desert they thrive in; past a mossy growth that spreads across wide patches of rock, blooming abundantly with tiny white flowers; past spiky succulents that would look more like cacti if they were less globular and less blue. Lance recognizes the tiny white flowers from Hunk; they’re responsible for the thick, citrusy smell in the air, and can be used in small amounts for seasoning.

Small paths lead to secluded havens where benches sit alongside the pathway and statues stand under the shade of particularly tall black trees. Somewhere to their left, water gurgles.

A pair of kids run past them, followed by a tired-looking older sibling. Lance smiles.

For all its somber history, the garden balances memorialization with the bursting life of the thriving plants; mourning occurs in harmony with children’s laughter as they play while hearing tales of heroic ancestors gone too soon. Death and life; tears and laughter; statues and trees; memory and hope.

“Here,” Keith says, stopping in the middle of the path.

Lance turns to follow his gaze, facing the right hand side of the trail. He begins to laugh.

Keith sticks his hands in his jacket pockets, scowling. “What’s funny?” he demands.

“Keith,” Lance says. He points to the plants. Keith didn’t have to point out his favorites. In the midst of more blue succulents and short trees is a new kind of plant. Oblong leaves with pointed ends swirl up from the ground. The leaves are black rimmed with red, curling downward into sharp spikes along the edges. “These are perfect,” Lance says.

Allura snickers.

Keith narrows his eyes.

“They’re very you,” Lance tells Keith.

“Shut up,” says Keith.

Lance nudges his shoulder, grinning.

“I said shut up.” Keith makes a face. “They’re cool, okay? The leaves are poisonous, right, but then they make this fruit in the winter, and it’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever tasted.”

Lance stares at him. “So, it’s like…hard on the outside, sweet on the inside? Keith. Are you coming out right now as a secret sweetheart?”

Allura cackles.

“What I’m doing is leaving.” Keith turns; he pulls his hands out of his pockets, pumping his arms as he starts to jog back the way they came. “I hope you get lost on the way out!” he calls back.

Lance starts to chase him, so Keith picks up speed, which makes Lance follow suit. Allura float-jogs along with them, keeping effortless pace. Keith speeds up more, and so does Lance, and that process repeats itself until they’re sprinting through the garden, bursting out through the archway with laughter in their eyes but no spare breath to give it voice.

Tears and laughter; statues and trees; soldiers remembering they’re children.

“This hologram thing is _so_ not fair,” Lance wheezes. He’s doubled over to catch his breath, and Allura’s radiant and unruffled, standing there calmly with folded arms and a slight smirk.

“We can all come visit the garden when you have your new body, Allura,” Keith offers when he can breathe again. “If you want.”

Lance’s heart squeezes: excitement, sadness, surprise that Keith made the offer. He kicks Keith in the shin, but only lazily.

“Closet sweetheart Keith. Who knew?”

“I’m going to kick your ass,” Keith tells him.

Lance shakes his head, grinning, his cheeks glowing red from the exertion. “You wouldn’t. You’re too sweet inside!” He turns away before Keith can threaten him again. “Come on, lover boy. I need me some lunch.”

Keith follows him, scowling, and so does Allura, laughing.

For lunch, they venture to the edge of downtown to Keith’s favorite restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall place that serves something almost like ramen with bright orange noodles. Allura departs, mentioning something about a tour of the Blade’s main facilities, because they decided a long time ago that it was too depressing for her to sit at the table and watch everyone else eat. They say goodbye, and Lance blows her a kiss, which makes her roll her eyes, and Lance enjoys the food greatly once he takes his first bite with immense suspicion.

With an hour and a half to kill before they’re due at the diplomacy meeting, he and Keith end up in a newly-reopened establishment boasting of “heart-pumping action” and “the planet’s best sim arcade.” They spend an atrocious amount of money and blast and slash their way through a ridiculous number of glowing, holographic monsters, back-to-back the whole time, and Keith has to floor it on the way back so they’re not late to the meeting.

They rejoin Allura en-route to the meeting, and she raises a brow at their sweaty hair and heavy breathing but doesn’t comment.

The meeting goes well.

Keith mentioned the Arusians’ nervousness surrounding the meeting, though they’d sustained serious structural damage they could use assistance repairing. Lance had suggested asking Allura to be present for the meeting, remembering the Arusians’ respect for her when they’d first met the Arusians so long ago.

“You think she’d have time for that?” Keith had asked, eyes narrowing.

“To help nurture new relationships in the universe?” Lance had said. “Totally.”

And he was right, of course. Allura had responded warmly, and her presence totally eased the tension in the meeting room as soon as she walked in.

From there, her kindness and gentle questioning helped facilitate the sharing of specific details regarding the needs of the Arusians, and the Blade is drafting an aid plan before the diplomats have even left.

Allura thanks the diplomats for the wonderful hospitality of the Arusians, remembering their warm welcome when the Castle of Lions had been parked there; she and Lance reminisce about the battle reenactments and ritual dances that were shared with them while on Arus. The Arusians are touched, and Allura invites them to visit the memorial garden before they depart. Lance suggests that they could perform a ritual dance there in honor of their lost ones, some time, if it would provide closure to some of their people.

The Arusians smile with hesitant curiosity, and Keith says, deadpan: “That sounds like a beautiful offering that we would be honored to accept.”

Lance grins at him and gives a thumbs-up, and Keith’s eyes on him linger for a heavy, calculating moment before he smiles back.

“Thanks for suggesting Allura come,” Keith says on the way out. His voice is low with sincerity. “Really. That was smart.”

Lance raises his eyebrows, thrown. He licks his lips. “Well. Obviously.” He smirks, and Keith rolls his eyes, and Allura’s smile for Lance is proud even through her exasperation.

Allura departs, but Lance hangs around for dinner. No need for Keith’s apartment to be empty when Lance has a perfectly good stomach and nowhere else he’s gotta be.

Back at Keith's place, Keith orders takeout.

“Water?” he offers, getting himself a glass from his cabinet. “Tea? Coffee?”

Lance raises an eyebrow at him. “You have tea?”

Keith shrugs. “Hunk gave me some: Romelle’s been getting really into making it. It’s good. You’d like it.”

Lance’s eyebrow climbs. “You think so?”

“I was right about the ramen place, wasn’t I?” Keith pulls out two mugs, two metal tea strainers, and a box of tea leaves with its own measuring spoon.

Lance watches him curiously.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Keith’s voice is flat.

“I’m not looking at you like anything!”

Rolling his eyes, Keith fills the mugs from the hot water spout beside his sink. “Fine. Just drink your tea.”

Lance wraps his fingers around the offered mug, lifting it to feel the wet steam on his face. Keith follows him to the living room, cradling his own mug.

The living room has a low, dark gray coffee table, a couch in a subtle maroon fabric, and a blank wall opposing the projector behind the couch. Kosmo is already settled in his bed in the corner of the room, adhering to his self-appointed bed time of eight PM; he responded to Lance’s greeting head-scratch when they got to the apartment with only a single, sleepy tail wag.

Sitting on the couch, Keith sets his mug on the coffee table to cool before he drinks it. Lance follows suit.

A button Keith hits on the couch arm turns off all the apartment lights except the purple stripe patterns on the living room walls.

Lance grabs a tablet from the floor, and grabs Keith’s wrist to unlock it with his handprint. Jeez, are Lance’s forearms gonna be that muscled, now that he’s fighting with a sword more often?

He busies himself picking music.

Keith clears his throat. “So. Any big plans on the horizon?”

Lance shrugs. He flicks through a couple unfamiliar songs.

“I mean, not all of us can go around helping distressed civilian planets every day, Keith.”

He leaves the tablet on the floor, content with the guitar-ish instrument now playing softly through Keith’s living room speakers.

“But, yeah, Coran and Pidge’s dad are gonna show me all the tricks on their latest model Allison ship so I can start teaching it on Altea.” He settles back into the couch cushions. “That’ll be cool. And the niblings miss me if I haven’t been home in a while, so.” He shrugs again.

He can feel Keith staring at him.

“I might go visit the mermaids next weekend if I can get the time off. I’m gonna see if I can talk Allura into coming with. You know. The usual.”

He can feel how intensely Keith is frowning at him. “What did _that_ mean?”

Lance turns his head, raising an eyebrow. “What did what mean?”

“‘Not all of us can go around helping civilian planets every day’? What the hell, Lance?”

Lance waves a hand, looking away. “You know. Your whole…relief organization thing.”

Keith looks at him like he’s suddenly grown a yalmor nose. “My whole ‘relief organization thing’?”

Lance nods. “Gettin’ pretty echo-y in here, bud.”

Keith’s eyes are wide but his brow is furrowed, making him look incredulous and just a little unhinged. “What about your whole ‘teacher thing,’ Lance? The whole ‘liberating outer-galaxy planets from Empirical rule’ thing?” He waves his hand sharply, agitated. “Your whole, you know, ‘shaping the future generations’ thing? You’re doing just as much important work as I am, Lance. Maybe more.”

Blank-faced, Lance stares at Keith.

Sweet-on-the-inside Keith.

Huh.

Keith’s shoulders climb ever so slightly towards his ears. He narrows his eyes. “What?”

Lance shakes his head. “Nothing.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I mean, I’m awesome, obviously.” He grins. “I’m glad we can agree on that. But…for just a second there, it almost sounded like you were being _nice_.” He shakes his head again, eyebrows rising. “You’d better watch it, man. You keep talkin’ me up like this, people might start thinking you're a nice dude.”

Keith says, disinterestedly, “Oh, how terrible. Let word of this never leave this room.”

Lance rolls his eyes. “You know what I meant.” He turns to face Keith, pulling one leg up onto the couch, gripping his ankle. He frowns, gaze hard. “You, being nice? Spiky-on-the-outside, bad-boy Keith? My sworn rival?”

Keith licks his lips. “First of all,” he says dryly, “bad boys can be nice, too, Lance. You really shouldn’t stereotype us like that.”

Lance laughs. Keith smiles thinly.

“Secondly, things haven’t been…like _that_ for a long time, Lance. We’ve been…friends. Good friends. For a long time, now.”

Lance throws his hands in the air. “Okay, but you gotta admit, you’re usually a nightmare about talking about people’s feelings! Every time you pull this ‘sensitive leader’ shtick, it still catches me off guard.”

Keith frowns, brow furrowing deeply. “This isn’t the ‘leader shtick,’ Lance. It’s just—us,” he says. “We’re… _friends_ , you know?” He sounds vaguely angry.

Lance watches him for a long, long time. Keith holds himself very still, only reaching out once to tap the button that heats his coffee table to keep their tea warm. The purple-tinged air feels like a physical thing, hanging there.

Closet sweetheart Keith. Lonely, tea-drinking, perceptive Keith.

Huh.

“Do you want, like—honey, or anything, in your tea?” Keith asks. “I might have milk.”

Lance shakes his head, and then the doorbell rings, stealing Keith away.

He brings the takeout the drone left outside his door into the living room, where they kick up their feet on the warm table and pass back and forth containers of alien vegetables and meat and a pasta thing that’s sort of rice-like.

“Man, is all the food on this planet so good?” Lance asks, licking his lips and tossing the last empty container to the table. “I mean, this, plus that ramen earlier: fucking bomb.”

He leans back contentedly, lacing his fingers behind his head.

“Oh, hey. You know who’s gotta try that ramen place? Hunk! He’d totally love it.”

“I’ll have to take him there sometime,” Keith says.

“This city is so cool,” Lance says, shaking his head. “I have to try that simulator arcade with Pidge sometime. Shit, and Allura too, once she’s got a body! Oh-ho-ho man, she’s gonna _love_ it!”

Keith grabs his mug from the table, watching Lance from the corner of narrowed eyes.

“You should send me your schedule some time,” Lance says easily. “We can do like, dinner and arcade games when you’re not working. It’ll be great! I know Pidge is always on you to hang out more.”

“Lance,” Keith says warningly.

“ _What?_ ” Lance demands. But when Keith doesn’t respond, he drops the subject. It’d be easier to help Keith feel more at home here if he was just willing to talk about it openly, but Lance isn’t gonna push. He can do subtle, thank you very much, contrary to popular belief.

He takes a sip of his tea, then shouts, “Yo!” He holds up his mug. “Keith! This is so good!”

Keith smiles. “What’d I tell you?”

To this, Lance says, “Ugh.”

“I’m about to risk sounding nice,” Keith says.

Lance raises his eyebrows.

“You know you’re doing amazing shit out there, right? We’re not fighting an intergalactic war anymore, but…The stuff you’re doing is important, Lance. Not just anyone could do it.”

Lance shoves him, but he’s smiling, a warm, glowy feeling in his chest rising too fast to stifle it. “You nice motherfucker!” he crows in utter delight.

“Word of it never leaves this room,” Keith repeats, but he’s smiling, too.

Silently, his grin still loosely in place, Lance removes one hand from his mug and wraps it around Keith’s, resting their hands between them on the couch.

Keith doesn’t say anything. He still doesn’t stop smiling, his lips just barely tipped upwards but his eyes glimmering with it in that very Keith-y way.

The warmth of the mug in Lance’s hand feels like it seeps all through way through his body.


	5. Sending my message to everyone, losing control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Lance?” Krolia says.
> 
> Keith glances up to see her blinking, her smile curling wider and wider.
> 
> There’s an urgent flood of warmth in Keith’s cheeks. He was fine! This was fine until Krolia _smiled_ at him like that.
> 
> Keith rubs a hand across his face. “Okay,” he says. “Well, anyway.”

Keith doesn’t see Lance for a while after that.

Keith takes some missions off planet, but mostly they don’t see each other because Lance is too busy. It’s not the first time they’ve gone a few weeks without seeing each other. It’s not that big a deal, really.

Besides, Lance messages him updates here and there, and Keith’s thrilled that Lance’s fighting, flying, _and_ teaching skills are so in demand.

But the way Keith’s heart slams up into his throat when he pushes into Adam and Shiro’s apartment and sees Lance sitting at the dining table? Yeah, his internal organs didn’t get the memo that it wasn’t a big deal.

They have dinner: Lance, Adam, Shiro, Hunk, Matt, Pidge, and Keith. Easy conversation rumbles along, leaving Keith free to add in or to just sit in quiet contentment. It only causes him, like, a small amount of physical pain when Lance throws back his head and laughs, grin huge and eyes glittering and the line of his jaw so, so enticing.

Adam cooked, so Shiro does the dishes. Pidge whoops Matt’s ass at some racing game in the living room. Then Hunk kicks _her_ ass. From there, it devolves into a vicious tournament involving much kicking of controllers and hands slapped over the opponents’ eyes and outright physical tackling in order to secure the match. Keith comes out of it with a bruised collarbone, thanks to Pidge’s elbow, and a giddy smile thanks to the whole evening.

Lance comes out of it with a smile that would pass for genuine, if not for the fact that Keith’s spent the entire night staring for too long at Lance’s smiles.

He nudges Lance’s elbow. “You good?” he asks, voice low.

Lance blinks at him, eyebrows lifting. “Yeah, man. I’m—” He pauses, watching Keith’s face. He says, calmly, “Sort of. Not totally.” He bites his lip before he says anything more.

Keith makes a decision. “I gotta ask Lance a few things for a Blade mission next week,” he says, gripping Lance by the upper arm. “Sorry to run. Thanks for having us over, guys.”

Adam waves at him bemusedly as he pulls Lance behind him, grabbing his jacket on the way out of the apartment.

The night air is just this side of warm, because winter lasts for all of a heartbeat, in the desert. A slight breeze ruffles the sleeves of Keith’s t shirt.

“You seemed like you wanted to talk about it,” Keith says when the door has closed behind them. “Did you not want to talk about it? Shit. Sorry.”

Lance smiles, punching Keith’s shoulder. “Chill. I did want to.” He sticks his hands in his jacket pockets, starting off in a random direction down the sidewalk. “Thanks.”

Keith falls into step beside him, saying nothing. He gives Lance the space to gather his words.

They’ve walked a couple blocks when Lance sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “I hate being such a broken record.” He kicks a rock off the sidewalk. Bugs chirp somewhere in the trees scattered here and there around the apartment complex. “But I can’t believe she can’t be here. She should be here.”

“I know.” Keith kicks a pebble off the sidewalk, watching it skitter and disappear into the grassy strip between the road and the nearest apartment building. “Hey,” he says, bumping Lance’s shoulder. “Let’s go to Altea.”

Lance stops walking, looking at Keith. “Right now?”

Keith shrugs. “Why not? We can take the ship I flew here.”

“She’s probably asleep,” Lance says, looking away.

“Okay. We can go check. She might be up.”

Lance bites his lip. Then he shrugs. “Okay.”

They board the small Blade ship parked in the Garrison hangar and, with a glazed-eyed look from the Altean on duty powering the wormhole at eleven PM Earth time, fly to New Altea.

They leave the ship in the hangar near the new Castle of Lions, in the section designated for off-planet visitors. A handful of other ships are parked there, of all makes and sizes. Other than an attendant dozing off behind a help desk, no one else is around in the middle of the very early morning on Altea.

It will be quintants still before the first of the Altean suns rises.

“She’s probably asleep,” Lance says again, lagging a half stride behind Keith.

Keith heads into the castle anyway, stopping only briefly outside to let the automated security system verify their identities.

“Worth checking,” Keith says.

He’s right.

They don’t even have to venture all the way to her bedroom, because Allura is awake and sitting in the control room when they get there, chair pulled up to the wall of window-screens displaying the city outside.

Lance walks faster as soon as he sees her. “Allura!” He hurries to her side, lifted hand freezing halfway to her shoulder. He drops the hand to his side, tacking on a smile. “What are you doing up?”

“Oh!” says Allura, turning to smile at him.

The two of them and their almost-convincing smiles.

“Couldn’t sleep, I suppose.” Allura’s tone is light. Keith narrows his eyes.

“But what are you doing here?” Allura asks, fixing Lance with a mild frown. “Don’t you have a meeting tomorrow morning?”

Keith’s eyebrows lift. “You do?”

Both of them look at him. “Keith!” Allura says, smiling. “How lovely to see you!”

Lance snaps his fingers. “Holy shit. Yeah! I totally forgot to brag about it! I can’t believe this.”

Allura rolls her eyes, looking exasperatedly to Keith. “I’ve informed Lance that if he continues to have such a big head about this, the _first_ thing I’ll do when I have a body again is kick his ass.”

Keith grins. “I can support that.”

“Thank you!” Allura clasps her hands in front of herself. “Anyway. Lance has meeting tomorrow morning to negotiate curriculum points for his new class!”

Lance nods, blowing out a breath. “Yep. We’re gonna start up our first full-on Altean-Garrison hybrid courses next year. Our first class of Allison cadets, if you will.” He grins, shrugging with false humility. “They want me to, uh. Be pretty involved.”

Keith blinks at him. “Dude. That’s amazing!”

Allura nods. She’s still smiling, her eyes bright. Keith believes the smile, this time.

“You think so?” Lance’s hand is glued to the back of his neck, elbow cocked to the side, his gaze somewhere out in the Altean landscape where Allura had been staring when they arrived. His bravado met with approval instead of derision, he doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with his face.

“ _Yes_.” Keith is a little incredulous. “Fuck, man. That’s incredible.”

“This will be wonderful, Lance,” Allura says. “I can’t think of anyone better suited to help design the course. Your quick learning and interest in other cultures has made you one of the most knowledgeable interplanetary representatives I know.”

Lance’s cheeks blossom slowly with a rich red, which is perhaps the most fascinating sight Keith has witnessed in his entire fucking life. He wishes he had it on film, so he could watch it happen over and over and over again.

“Okay, but I’m _not_ supposed to get a big head about it? The two of you are a nightmare.”

Allura winks at Keith. Keith grins.

“Sorry, Lance,” Allura says. “If you keep trying to hide behind a showy attitude, it’s my duty as your friend to call you out.”

Lance’s lips are pouted. “I hate both of you, you know that?”

Allura’s hand rises, palm forward like she’s going in for a high five with Keith.

Keith’s heart pushes into his throat, which he clears.

“Anyway,” Allura says, dropping her hand and shaking back her hair with a holographic glimmer. “Lance. You do know you’re a talented and valuable member of the coalition, don’t you?”

Lance throws up his hands. “Okay, we’re done. This is over. Lance is fine, everybody; thanks for coming. This conversation about Lance’s feelings is now adjourned.”

So instead they talk about other things.

Keith tells them how Kosmo has recently taken to teleporting Ezor into his apartment whenever she asks, because he’s learned she gives good treats.

They end up sitting on the floor, Allura cross-legged and Lance leaning back on his hands just far enough away to ward off any knee-jerk reactions to knock her shoulder or squeeze her hand. Keith leans against the window, knees bent up and arms crossed comfortably over his chest.

Lance tells Keith about the time he taught Allura to knit so she could make sweaters for the mice, and Allura tells him about the time she beat Lance twelve times in a row in combat training and he ended up twelve homemade milkshakes in debt.

Lance seems restless, hands playing a jerky rhythm on his legs, legs folded, then extended out straight. He’s filled with bird-like agitation, ready to fly away. On an impulse, Keith sticks out his legs and places his calves across Lance’s lap.

Lance stills. He looks at Keith.

Keith doesn’t say anything, leaning back against the window and raising an eyebrow, daring Lance to say anything.

Lance stays quiet.

Satisfied, Keith tips his head back, letting his eyes drop closed.

It’s quiet for a moment. Keith jumps but doesn’t pull away when Lance’s hands rest on his shins.

“Hey, Allura,” Lance drawls into the quiet. “Romelle got to Altea a couple days ago, right? How’s that goin’?” Keith doesn’t need to open his eyes to know the exact curve of Lance’s grin. “How many times you been over to the café since she’s had it open? No, let me guess. Three times a day. No, no! Four.”

He hears Allura scoff. She doesn’t dispute the claim, though. Keith grins.

Lance’s fingers curl around Keith’s shins, just loosely. Keith isn’t sure if he’s holding Keith there or holding himself steady.

Either way, Keith’s not going anywhere.

Keith hops a wormhole to Altea the very next day he has off.

He goes when Allura’s not supposed to be in any meetings, but it still takes him a while before he finds her in the holo-projection room, sitting in a mirage of a mountain juniberry field.

Keith crosses his arms and leans back against the wall. The illusion of a sprawling field splinters around him, dark gray wall and flooring flickering back into visibility just where he leans.

“Look,” he says. “You can talk to me. If you…you know, if you need someone to talk to.”

Allura squints at him, folding her hands in her cross-legged lap. She’s chosen to appear wearing a simple pink dress, and with her hand back in a long, fluffy ponytail. She looks younger than she usually does.

“That’s kind of you, Keith.” She smiles at him. “But I’m quite alright, thank you.”

Keith raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

Allura pouts her lips daintily.

Keith crosses one leg over the other. “What’s going on?”

Allura tilts her head to one side. “Not much. I have some files to read through before a council meeting tomorrow.”

Keith is silent.

Allura stares back calmly.

Keith doesn’t say anything, just raises his brows.

Allura narrows her eyes at him. “I am fine, Keith.”

He considers her silently, remembering her recent insomnia and the smiles that don’t quite shine in her eyes the way they normally would.

Allura huffs and casts her eyes up into the middle distance, her jaw set firmly.

“Look,” Keith says. “It’s just…I know what I would want right now, if I were you.”

Allura returns her eyes to him, raising an eyebrow. “To not be trapped as a hologram while my consciousness is stored within a giant mechanical lion?”

A rueful smile tugs Keith’s mouth. “Well, yeah. Aside from that. I know I would want to hit something. That’s obviously not an option, but. You can yell at me, if you want.”

Allura wrinkles her nose. Crisply accented, she says, “What?”

Keith exhales. “We’re similar, Allura. And what happened to you— _all_ of it—none of it’s been fair. If I were you, I would at least want to yell at someone, if I couldn’t hit something. I’m just guessing here, but I figure you might be pretty frustrated right about now.”

Allura frowns. “I am not…mad at _you_ , Keith. I fail to see how yelling at you will help me to feel better.”

Keith shakes his head, pushing off from the wall. “Yell about anything. Whatever you want.”

Making a suspicious face, Allura gets to her feet and crosses her arms. “This is ridiculous.”

Keith shrugs one shoulder. “So's _Voltron_.”

Allura smiles thinly. She sighs, looking out at the field. False flowers flutter in a simulated breeze. “I wouldn’t know how to begin,” she admits.

“Okay. What’s one thing that pisses you off?”

Allura snorts, her eyes flicking back to Keith. “Just _one_ thing?” she asks, raising one delicate eyebrow.

Keith smiles. “To start with.”

Allura’s lips bend into a frown. Her forehead creases. “Well. I greatly dislike missing out on Hunk’s latest recipes.”

Keith nods. “Yeah. That sucks. You wanna try saying it a little less diplomatically?”

Allura chews her lip and considers this.

She decides in the affirmative, apparently.

“I _hate_ it,” she says, more fire in her tone. “I really, deeply _hate_ it.” Her brows furrow low over her eyes. “Food is a small joy, but I miss it. It isn’t fair.”

“It’s not,” Keith agrees.

“No, it’s _not_ ,” Allura snaps.

She blinks, looking startled.

“That was good,” Keith says. “It sucks. You can say it.”

Allura narrows her eyes, looking ponderously out at the flowers. “I saved the entire _multiverse_ ,” she says slowly. “And I _brought back Altea_.” She frowns. “I’m grateful for all of that, I _am_ , but…it isn’t fair that after everything, I still cannot be home! Not truly!” Her voice rises a notch. “It’s not fair! I can’t smell the juniberries, or taste Altean cooking, or dip my toes in the springs, or pilot a ship, or shake the hands of visitors, or touch my father’s statue—”

She breaks off, her eyes shining wetly and her chest rising and falling at a quick tempo. Her hands are fists at her sides.

“Yeah,” says Keith.

In the back of her throat, Allura makes a rough, growled noise of frustration.

“Yeah,” Keith repeats.

She makes the sound again. “ _Altea_ is _back_ ,” she says, her eyes glittering fiercely. “Yet I _still_ cannot interact with my home planet! I’ve saved endless realities and brought back planets, but it didn’t bring back my _family_ , or any of the people I knew in childhood, or the—the _years_ that I lost.” She presses her lips together. They’re trembling. A few tears chase each other down her cheeks, fast and glistening.

“It sucks,” Keith says brilliantly.

Allura laughs through her teary frustration. “It _does!_ ” she exclaims. “It does indeed suck.” She sniffs, wiping her eyes, although more tears soon fall to re-wet her cheeks. “Oh, Keith. I wish it didn’t _suck_ like this.”

Keith smiles at her, small. He says, “Yeah.”

She sighs, tear-sticky. She clears her throat and then whispers, “ _Quiznak_.”

She exhales a half sob and squeezes her eyes closed. “Fuck!” she shouts. It echoes in the big, empty hologram room.

Allura smiles, just a tiny one.

A grin pulls on Keith’s mouth, and he fights it, not sure if that’s the appropriate response right now.

Allura starts giggling, though, even as holographic tears drip from her chin. She takes one halting step forward, half raising a hand, and more tears stream as she stops several paces away from Keith. She cannot take his hand or wrap him in a hug. He can’t offer her any form of physical comfort. Her smile doesn’t fully decay though; she stands a yard away from him, sniffling, with a little upwards tilt to her mouth, her eyes soft as she watches Keith.

“Thankyou, Keith.” Warmth shimmers in her eyes behind the tears.

Keith shifts his weight. “Yeah,” he says for the millionth time in the last ten minutes. He twists his mouth to the side, crossing his arms more firmly. “Look. Do you want to—like. Talk? Or I could go. Or I could just…hang out, if you want?”

Allura looks away, twisting her ponytail around one hand.

“I’ll do whatever. What do you want?” Keith presses.

Allura’s eyes shift back to him, the scrunch of her nose hesitant. “Just…stay for a while?” she asks. “I don’t need you to talk.” She sniffs. “I’d like to read through my council reports. But…stay?”

So Keith does.

He leaves Altea in time to make dinner before Krolia’s scheduled to stop by.

Kosmo stations himself in the kitchen doorway, sitting very tall and prim. Keith grins at him.

“Not for you, buddy,” he says. But he tosses over a sliver of carrot anyway, which Kosmo catches before it hits the ground.

“Don’t tell Hunk I’m wasting ingredients on you, okay?” He gestures warningly with the kitchen knife. Kosmo blinks at him.

Keith snorts, turning back to the carrots.

Lance sent a box of veggies for Keith along with Acxa on her way into work a couple days ago, fresh from the Garrison apartments’ community garden. Inside the box was a note telling him he should totally ask Hunk for his sweet-and-sour stir fry recipe. It also mentioned that Hunk was going to be in Keith’s quadrant next week, if he didn’t already know. “Idk if you have his app :).”

So Keith has ingredients, and a recipe to offer his mother a nice meal, and his lunch with Hunk on the calendar for tomorrow wasn’t even awkward to set up, because he’d already started a conversation asking for the recipe, and Lance had suggested he take Hunk to that ramen place, anyway, and—

Keith sets down his knife on the cutting board on top of the carrot slices. He braces his hands on the gray counter on either side of the cutting board.

This is new.

Not the cooking—although that is, too, technically.

Keith set up lunch plans for tomorrow. He’s about to serve Krolia a home-cooked meal prepared from a recipe from one of his friends, using vegetables gifted to him by another friend. He’s going to serve it to her a little later than planned, because he was caught up spending time with yet another friend this afternoon. 

There’s quiet guitar music seeping through his apartment, and sauce heating on the stove with a gentle sizzling sound, and Kosmo’s claws click against the floor as he shifts, tilting his head to look cute in a bargain for more carrots, and if Keith would pick up the knife again, the satisfying _thop_ of blade against cutting board would return to the atmosphere.

The apartment isn’t quiet anymore.

Keith turns his head so he’s not breathing on the carrots and exhales slowly.

Holy _shit_.

And it’s through Lance’s facilitation, mostly. Like, Keith made his own decision to go see Allura this afternoon, and he’s the one who reached out to Hunk, but…it’s because of Lance that he’s been to Altea recently to recognize that Allura was hurting. It’s because of Lance that he had a simple excuse to reach out to Hunk, and an easy reason to invite him over.

Keith feels a sudden need to sit down.

No fucking wonder Lance has got multiple planets after his teaching skills.

He’s showing Keith how to connect with his family now that they don’t all live on the same ship anymore. He’s teaching Keith how to make his quiet apartment a home.

“Oh. Wow,” Keith says out loud.

Kosmo stands up and sits down again in the doorway, like _look how good I am. Carrot treat, please?_

Keith tosses him another piece of carrot, his head spinning.

“This is nice, Keith.” Krolia touches the piece of driftwood that decorates the mantle above the automated heat generator in Keith’s living room.

Keith’s eyes widen. He says, “Oh.”

He sits on the couch, running his hands down his thighs to rest on his knees. “Can I…tell you something?”

He glances away, speaking to the blank projector wall instead of his mother.

It’s not that he and Krolia aren’t close. If asked, he’d say they are, actually. Or they’re getting there, at least. But…no matter how well they get along, it doesn’t change the fact that he never knew her growing up.

He likes Krolia. He understands her choices; he would’ve made the same ones, he thinks. It doesn’t mean she’s slipped into feeling like his _mom_ , all of a sudden.

He thinks—he thinks this is something he’d want to share with his mom, though. Either way, Krolia definitely cares for him, and is definitely his friend. He wants…

She should know. It just feels right.

“Of course, Keith.” Her voice is soft, eyebrows lifted in casual interest. She finishes the last sip from her wine glass.

She hasn’t pushed him to treat her more like a mother, which Keith appreciates. She’ll take whatever he offers, but she hasn’t pushed him. It’s why he wants to tell her this, probably.

“I think…” Keith says, gripping his knees and talking to the coffee table, “I’m in love.”

He flicks his eyes up. Krolia has a tiny smile on her face, her eyes big with surprise but soft.

“Yeah?” she says.

Keith nods. “He, um. Gave me that.” He gestures to the driftwood décor.

Lance had brought it over one night, thrusting it forward with a gleeful expression. “Keith! Does this look like Pidge, or does this look like Pidge?” Keith had snorted, and admitted that it did, just a little, if you held it in exactly the right way. He’d set it on the mantle when they went inside, which made Lance laugh, and so Keith had left it there.

“That was nice of him,” Krolia says, looking at the wood again. With no context, it’s a simple, beautiful decoration.

“Well.” Keith smiles, just small. “He’s a nice guy.”

Krolia leans a shoulder against the mantle, her arms folded easily across her chest, and her smile burns with such a soft pleasure that Keith has to look away.

“He found it in a cove by Varadero beach,” Keith says, to the wall.

There is a brief quiet.

Kosmo trudges into the room carrying a plastic bone and collapses into his living room bed, balancing the bone upright between his paws and beginning to chew with a loud grinding noise.

“Lance?” Krolia says.

Keith glances up to see her blinking, her smile curling wider and wider.

There’s an urgent flood of warmth in Keith’s cheeks. He was fine! This was fine until Krolia _smiled_ at him like that.

Keith rubs a hand across his face. “Okay,” he says. “Well, anyway.”

Her grin curves sharper.

“I promised Shiro and Adam I’d call tonight,” Keith says before that grin can open and say—say—well, either something teasing, or something soft, Keith’s not sure which would be worse.

He stands up. “It was nice to have dinner with you. Really.” He smiles at her, ignoring the burning in his cheeks.

He accepts back the empty wine glass. He hesitates. Krolia stands statue-still.

Keith thinks of Lance and he thinks of Hunk and he thinks of Allura and her holographic incorporeality, and he takes a step forward and wraps his arms around Krolia, smashing his nose into her shoulder so he doesn’t have to look at her or say anything.

It’s brief; then Keith steps back. Krolia’s eyes are simmering with words, but Keith doesn’t say anything, so neither does she.

He walks her to the door and says goodbye with a smile and a wave. “Thank you for coming over,” he says, meaning it, and wanting her to know that he does.

“Of course, Keith,” she says easily. Her eyes glitter. She does know—he can just tell.

He closes the door with a smile.

It takes all of the time necessary to set up a video call to Shiro for Keith’s smile to morph into a scowl, because the first thing Adam says when he picks up is, “Hey, Keith. Seen Lance lately?”

“Shit-eating is a bad look on you,” Keith tells him, settling back into the couch and crossing his arms.

Adam says, very seriously, “I’ve been told that I’m very handsome.” On his own couch at home, he looks over his shoulder. “Right, babe? Babe. Get in here. Keith’s being rude to me.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “Your fiancé’s harassing me, Shiro.”

Shiro plops down on the couch next to Adam, rubbing his eyes. He’s in pale gray pajamas, and his prosthetic is off. “I’m not getting in the middle of this.”

“So. Keith.” Adam slings an arm around Shiro’s shoulders and receives a tired smile. “You and Lance the other night after dinner. Make-out sesh in the backseat of your spaceship, right?”

Keith grits his teeth. “ _No_.” It comes out snarly because he’s sick of the teasing, not because, you know, he very much wishes that had been the case. “I noticed Lance seemed off. That’s all. I made an excuse to leave so he could talk about it.”

Shiro blinks, his eyes widening. “I didn’t notice anything wrong.”

Keith waves a hand like he can brush away Shiro’s impending stress. “It wasn’t a huge deal. Lance was really feeling it that Allura wasn’t there for dinner night. We went to see her.”

Shiro’s eyebrows and the corners of his mouth are sinking lower and lower. “I had no idea something was wrong.” His hand flexes on his knee. “Lance knows he can come to me about this stuff, right? He can come to me about anything.”

With his free hand, Adam grips Shiro’s forearm. “Takashi. He knows. It’s okay.”

Shiro takes a slow breath.

“You can reach out to him tomorrow, if you want,” Adam says, running his hand up and down Shiro’s arm soothingly. “But it sounds like Keith had it covered, anyway.” The grin he unfurls at Keith is entirely too suggestive for Keith’s liking.

He scowls—even though there’s pride smoldering in his chest that he was there for Lance, even more than _Shiro_ was. Maybe he’s not so bad at all this ‘feelings’ bullshit.

“Okay,” Shiro says, closing his eyes. “Yeah, okay. You’re right.” Opening his eyes, he smiles. “Thanks, Adam. Nice work, Keith.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Whatever.”

Adam bites his lip, his eyes twinkling. He blurts, “And _then_ you two made out in the backseat of your spaceship, right?”

“NO!” Keith clenches his hands into fists on the couch at his sides. “There’s not even room for two people in the back of that thing anyway, Adam!”

Adam laughs.

Shiro says, “Adam. Give him a break.” But he’s grinning, too.

“No. He deserves this, ’Kashi. How quickly you forget. This little shit nearly started a bar fight at our bachelor party, remember? I have a season pass on Keith-teasing rights.”

Keith sits up straighter. “Shiro…”

It’s like a dark cloud passes over Shiro’s face. It dims, and the color goes grayish to match his pajamas. Okay, so there’s no chance he doesn’t recall that Keith was this close to punching out James Griffin over the last of the sliders at the bachelor party. There was, like. Yelling. Threats were possibly made.

Keith winces.

Slowly, Shiro nods. “Yeah. That checks out.”

“ _Shiro_ ,” Keith groans.

Adam grins. He plops a kiss loudly on Shiro’s cheek. “Love you, Taki. Now. Keith.” He turns back to the camera and points through it at Keith. “Lance talks a big game, so I’ve gotta know. Is he that good a kisser?”

Keith hangs up on them.


	6. Are we waiting for some kind of feeling, or savin' it up till the morning?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sun drips lower. Lance kicks the sand some more, feeling sweat on his skin and smelling salt and relishing the feelings of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys...............................................i love this chapter so much

Hunk’s been staring at him for the past five minutes. Lance can feel the weight of it.

“Dude,” he says, resting his knitting in his lap, “ _what?_ ”

They’re perched on stools in Hunk’s café, killing time before Allura has a meeting, Lance has work, and Hunk needs to open the café.

Hunk narrows his eyes. His own project has been neglected in his hands for the whole bout of staring. “You’d tell me if you and Keith were a thing all of a sudden, right?”

Lance’s eyes go Jupiter-big. “ _What?!_ ” he absolutely does not shriek.

Beside him, Allura laughs, high and bright with surprise. “What?” she says as well.

Hunk purses his lips. “Well. Nothing, it’s just…I don’t know, man. The look on Keith’s face when he said you were the one who told him I’d like that ramen place?” Hunk picks up his knitting again, staring studiously down at the green yarn. “And you…talk about him enough that like, I just wondered. Never mind, though.” He flashes Lance a smile. “I’m glad you two are finally such good friends.”

Lance snorts, picking up his needles and poking one through a loop of pink yarn. Sylvio’s old winter hat ripped, so Lance is making him a new one.

“Hold on a tick…” says Allura.

Lance’s eyes flick up, widening. She’s looking at him quizzically, mouth compressed into a thoughtful pout. “Allura,” he says warningly.

“No, I think Hunk could be onto something here! Lance.” She steeples her fingers, watching him with narrowed eyes. “Are you _certain_ you’re not dating Keith?”

Lance drops his knitting. His mouth falls open. “Are you kidding me?! No, I’m not dating Keith! I think I would know if I was suddenly dating Keith!”

“Hm,” says Allura.

Hunk shrugs.

“ _I’m not dating Keith!_ ” Lance repeats, because he’s not sure they’re getting the memo.

“Right, of course not,” Allura says, nodding. She asks, squinting, “Is this similar to the way I am _not_ dating Romelle?”

Lance is a swirl of confusion and embarrassment. And now, also excitement. “A- _ha_.” He points an accusatory finger. “Are you admitting you want to date Romelle?”

Allura raises one eyebrow. “Are you admitting you want to date Keith?”

“I’m admitting nothing,” says Lance. “Wait—I don’t want to date Keith.”

Allura crosses one leg over the other, pointing her toes daintily. “I’m not admitting anything either, then.”

“Uh, Lance?” says Hunk. “You’re never gonna finish that hat while it’s laying on the floor, my dude.”

Lance points at Allura emphatically. “ _Well_ ,” he says.

Saying nothing more, he gets off his stool and retrieves his knitting, grateful that Hunk keeps his floors so clean.

Lance goes to work, which today means he stays on Altea.

He takes a small personal transport vehicle, poking an address into the screen and then sitting back in the thin-cushioned seat to watch Altea’s tall, spindly buildings pass by his window.

He checks over the simulators when he reaches the flight school. The first year Altean cadets get time on the intro-level sims today, just to get the feel of actually flying. This portion of the class is basically glorified driver’s ed. Space flight is a pretty handy skill when you're part of a massive intergalactic coalition, it turns out. These cadets could go on to pilot anything from cargo ships to exploration vessels, space-Ubers to fighter jets.

The simulators are an Altean design, so they’re high tech and sleek, composed simply of a chair, a control panel, and a headset with a visor. When the simulators are running, screens will appear and hover above them, showing Lance a display of the pilot’s view.

Lance runs through the start-up checklist in his head, quizzing himself. _Seat belt. All controls in neutral. Check brake controls. Thrusters off. Start engine…_

He goes through it twice, as if he didn’t have it perfect the first time.

Exhaling and shaking out his hands, he feels a grin tugging his mouth. He’s got this. Like, actually. No fake confidence, no showy overcompensation. He knows his stuff, and he knows these kids.

Beaming, he palms the button to open the doors, letting in the handful of cadets who’re already waiting outside.

“Yo!” He sweeps an arm toward the simulator chairs. “Because I’m super, _super_ nice, I’m gonna let you guys go ahead and get started early, so you can have as much time on the simulators as possible. Sound good?”

Mirin gives him a high-five on the way in, Iona takes long strides to one of the sims without hardly looking at him, and Aiden gives him a tiny, hesitant smile and needs to be invited again to take one of the chairs. Lance waves to a departing guardian, squinting at the retreating figure and rolling his bottom lip into his mouth.

He’s got the kids’ names down. That part’s fine. He _wants_ to be the kind of instructor who says hi to every students’ parent or guardian by name, but…he’s not great at names, okay?

“Lance!” Mirin calls.

Lance won’t let them call him anything other than his name or use any honorifics because it makes him feel too weird. Iverson about lost his shit when he heard about it, but Lance is a venerated war hero and already well-loved by his students, so there’s really nothing Iverson can do. It makes Lance grin every time he thinks about it.

“Yeees ma’am,” he says, squatting beside Mirin’s chair and looking up at the screen that’s appeared above her head.

“I’m through the first level already,” she says, pride oozing from her tone.

Lance scans the stats showing on the screen, knowing her visor is displaying the same numbers. He raises an eyebrow. “With how many deductions?”

He watches her grin fold into a scowl.

“Uh-huh.” He pats her arm, standing up. “One of my friends flies a lot like you,” he tells her. “He’s always taking risks. But you gotta show me you can get through the basic levels without losing those points before I can let you move on, okay? Why don’t you try that level again?”

“Which friend?” Mirin asks, sitting up straighter. “Is it one of the paladins of Voltron?”

Lance smiles. “Get through that level with no deductions,” he tells her, “and I’ll tell you who it is.”

The class goes well. The kids are jittery with excitement the whole way through; even the ones who were nervous coming in end up with smiles on their faces below their visors, and they all leave with bouncing steps.

Lance watches their joy with his own elation skyrocketing in his chest. He remembers the first time he “flew” in a simulator at the Garrison: the juddering of the seat as he “took off;” the glide of the controls under his sweaty hands; the roaring of his pulse in his skull.

Mirin makes it through the first five levels with _almost_ perfect scores, so Lance leans down to whisper in her ear before she heads home. “It’s Keith.” He watches a fast smile curl her mouth. “But even _he’ll_ tell you it’s important to get the basics down solid before you start showing off too much, okay?” She nods distractedly and gives him a parting high-five.

He sees her pump her fist in the air as she jogs out of the simulator room, and he grins. He’ll have to see if he can get Keith to come to a class, some time. She will lose her whole hyper little mind.

Maybe he can ask Keith tonight.

He exhales heavily when all the students are gone, running his hands through his hair and grinning. 

He’s got a message from Shiro asking how class went, to which he responds, ‘ _Awesome_.’ He doesn’t even feel the need to say anything cocky, or to add, “So if you see Keith, tell him to suck it!” so like, he might finally be growing up.

 _Wonderful job, Lance_ , Shiro says. Lance smiles the whole flight to Earth.

He sets his ship in the sand, which he’s not strictly allowed to do, but it’s a small ship, and he puts her down carefully on an unoccupied section of beach, and as long as no one reports him to Iverson, Shiro, or Allura, he figures he’ll get away with it. He usually does.

He thumbs open the radar screen on his personal datapad and jogs a short way down the beach until he spots dark jeans and a red-and-white jacket, conspicuous amongst the sun dresses and swimsuits.

“Keith!”

Keith turns his head and raises a hand. Lance closes the rest of the distance, and they greet each other with clasped hands and a brief hug.

“We gotta wait till golden hour,” Lance says, pulling away. “But I wanted to head down this way, see if we can get some of those kite sails in the background.”

Keith falls wordlessly into step, his shoes missing and jeans rolled up above his ankles. There’s something very raw about seeing Keith in his normal clothes but with exposed ankles and sand between his toes.

“So, sunset behind me, obviously.” Lance makes a frame in the air with his hands in L shapes, a director with a vision. “Make sure to get the ocean in the shot, but don’t cut my hair out of the frame. I’m trying to nurture a real sexy, heartthrob professor vibe, here. Make me look good, huh?” He winks, and Keith rolls his eyes, and Lance laughs and shoves him so that he stumbles a few steps in the sand.

The sun slides toward the ocean, painting the faintest pink blush across the water.

“Did I tell you I’ve got a kid who totally idolizes you?” Lance asks, kicking the fine white sand to feel it against his toes and watch it spray up with a soft hiss.

He watches Keith raise an eyebrow, then looks back to the sand, kicking up a tiny shower on every other step.

“No,” says Keith.

Lance nods. “I mean,” he puts a palm to his chest, “ _I’m_ obviously her favorite Voltron paladin.”

Okay, so maybe he’s not all that grown up just yet.

“But she likes to fly sloppy—I’m sorry, _risky_ —so she’s got this total thing for your flying.”

All Keith says is, “Nice,” but he’s got a thin smile that lasts for at least a good thirty seconds, so Lance knows he’s pleased.

Lance bites his tongue.

The sun drips lower. Lance kicks the sand some more, feeling sweat on his skin and smelling salt and relishing the feelings of home.

“I’m her favorite, though,” he repeats, just to be clear.

He’s spent a long time in Keith’s shadow as a pilot, okay? It’s fair, he thinks, to still feel so competitive.

After being second best to the guy for so long, of course he likes it when Keith looks at him that…that one particular way. It’s the way he looked at Lance when he showed off his bayard’s broadsword form. It’s like…like Lance is so larger-than-life, so special, that Keith can’t see anything else past him.

Lance frowns, something fluttering ungracefully inside his ribcage. “So.” He clears his throat. “Suck it, Keith.”

The sun kisses the edge of the ocean, sending a stripe of rich orange blazing down the water, reds and pinks radiating out across the sky and the glittering sea. Keith sits down in the sand with his datapad, sticking one leg out straight and keeping the other bent up as a stable rest for the pad.

He nods to Lance. He’s started filming.

“Hey, guys. It’s me, your most beloved instructor.” Lance spreads his hands to his sides grandly. “I did it, folks. You’re coming to Earth on a field trip!”

Keith’s eyes are dark and intense, trained on the datapad he’s using to film Lance. Yeah, like that. It’s nice when Keith looks at him like that: focused.

“Welcome,” Lance says, “to Varadero beach.” He grins and holds the pose for a moment.

After a rushed count of three, he drops his arms and jogs up to Keith, feet digging into the warm, soft sand. Sand engulfs his fingers and squishes under his jeans as he flops down beside Keith.

“Run back the tape, camera boy.”

Keith rolls his eyes. He does, however, tap the just-taken video and scroll back to the beginning.

Lance watches himself, tall and grinning and backlit by the sunset. The video stops, and Lance tosses both hands in the air. “Got it in one take!” he crows. He punches Keith in the shoulder hard enough to make him brace himself with a hand in the sand to keep upright. “That’s what you get working with natural talent.” He frames his face between his fingers and flutters his eyelashes.

Keith shoves him sideways so hard his ear hits sand, warm and soft.

Squawking, Lance pushes himself upright, twists, and launches himself on top of Keith. Keith shoves him away with a hand to the face, sand shushing around them as they both try to kick each other.

They wrestle for the datapad. It is, in a word, messy. Sand grits Lance’s back between his skin and his t-shirt. He spits some out of his mouth, blinking rapidly as Keith tries to shove his face against the ground. He grabs a belt loop on the left-hand front of Keith’s jeans, tugs, and shovels in a nice heap of sand.

Keith yells and gets to his feet, brushing at his pants as if that’s gonna help.

Lance flops to his back, holding his stomach as he laughs.

Keith stands on his right foot, shaking the left one vigorously to try to get the sand to come out the bottom of his pants. It doesn’t work. His stupid pants are too tight.

Lance howls.

Brows lowered in a glower that absolutely doesn’t fit with the idyllic ocean sunset behind him, Keith pops the button on his jeans and tugs them halfway down his hips, sand cascading in a delicate shower from the front of his red boxers and the folds of black denim.

His scowl is small and prim when he zips up his pants, pokes the button back into place—and looks up to see Lance grinning at him, holding up datapad, little “recording” light glowing red.

“Funny,” Keith says, dry and not amused.

Lance winks at him. “Smile for the camera, man!”

Keith flips him off.

Lance barks a laugh. “Tell us, Keith.” He crosses one leg over the other, holding the datapad in one hand and leaning back on the other. “Who are you gonna thank as you accept this award tonight?”

Keith’s eyes narrow. He’s in shadow with the sun setting behind him, the edges of his messy hair singed red. “What’s the award?”

“Worst haircut.”

Keith’s mouth opens; he closes it into a frown, rolling his eyes. He lifts and bends his arms, tugging a black band from under his jacket sleeve and gathering his hair into a tiny ponytail at the nape of his neck.

Lance blinks. He stares. He sits up, using his free hand to point a finger at Keith. “Dude. You should do that, like, _way_ more often.”

Keith rolls his eyes again. “Why, so you can literally pull my pigtails?”

Lance scoffs, an unattractive sound high in his throat. “What, you think you’re my playground crush or something?” He grins. The thought is as funny as Allura suggesting he wants to date Keith.

They’re close friends now, sure. And maybe Lance really likes when Keith’s attention is focused on him. That’s because he’s just so damn competitive, though!

…Isn’t it?

Keith rolls his eyes once again. He opens his mouth, something wry burning behind his eyes—and then he closes it again.

The water slaps quietly at the shore; just visible, the top edge of the sun is a searing red. Keith is outlined in electric orange.

It’s a beautiful image. Lance should save the still from this video.

Lance wrinkles his nose, his heart flopping in his chest, fish-like.

“Whatever,” Keith says finally. “I’d like to thank my friends and family,” he says, hands finding his hips.

Lance focuses the video in closer on Keith’s face, catching the slight amused uptick of one corner of his mouth.

 _Hey_ , Lance thinks at himself, _what the fuck_.

“And I’d like to thank Shiro, for giving me the _actual_ worst haircut back in middle school.”

Lance lets the datapad plop to the sand. “Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He pushes to his feet with one hand, holding the other one up in a _stop_ gesture. “Hang on, man. Slow it down.” He sets his jaw, leveling a finger at Keith’s chest. “There was a haircut.” He keeps his voice steady, but it’s a battle. “Worse. Than the mullet? You’d better not be fucking with me, man. You can’t play with a guy like this.”

Keith’s smile twitches like he’s trying to keep it down. “There…might have been.”

“I’m gonna need photographic evidence, my dude. Like, I _need_ it. Do you hear me? I will die if I do not see pictures of this haircut. What are we talking here? Shaved head? Shitty bangs? Bowl-cut? Oh my god, Shiro gave you a bowl-cut, didn’t he?”

“Lance.” Keith pushes him a single step back with a palm flat to his chest. Lance hadn’t realized how close he’d gotten. He looks down at the hand on his chest.

That is. Keith’s hand.

Yep, that’s what that is. Keith’s hand, right there, just hangin’ out. On Lance’s chest.

Lance swallows.

“Those pictures,” Keith says slowly. “Were all destroyed.” He drops his hand. Lance watches it fall.

He drags his wide eyes up to Keith’s calm ones.

“But, yes.” Keith smirks.

Something inside Lance catches on fire.

“It was a bowl-cut.”

“This is the greatest tragedy that has ever befallen humankind,” Lance says. He sits down in the sand, because there used to be pictures out there in the world of baby Keith with an embarrassing bowl-cut, and Lance will never, ever see them. “I mean, I can still make fun of you. _Obviously_ I’m still gonna make fun of you. But _pictures_ , man.” He falls to his back, a hand to his chest.

There’s an echo of Keith’s hand there, a tingling afterimage.

Lance clutches his chest dramatically with both hands. “Real, photo _evidence_. We coulda had it _all_ , dude! Rollin’ in the deep, and shit!”

Keith laughs, and kicks sand at him, and lays in the sand next to him for a while while the light seeps away and the air goes minutely less hot.

Lance calls Hunk desperately on his flight home.

Hunk doesn’t pick up.

Lance punches himself in the leg. “ _Shit_.”

Hunk’s voicemail message plays, and Lance grinds his teeth together.

“Hunk!” His voice is strained and high-pitched.

“ _Hunk_.”

He says, strangled, “Do I want to date _Keith?_ ”

Lance is losing his fucking mind, just a little, tiny bit. Just barely. Just a little.

He…wants to date Keith. He wants to date _Keith_. Holy mother of fuck.

That is…wild. This is some absolutely wild shit right here. Like, who would have ever thought?

Not Lance, that’s for sure.

But he does want to, and maybe he has for like, a good-ass while. So that’s. Something.

It happened so slowly and easily that Lance didn’t even _notice._ Their friendship blossomed into something bright and soft and warm and wonderful, and the fruit that followed the flowering is…is. Is something.

Something heart-clenching and vein-buzzing and dizzying. Something that makes Lance shiver when Keith touches him. Something that looks maybe, a little tiny bit, like a _crush_.

He’s lying flat on his back on Nadia’s bed, staring at the purple butterflies painted around her bedroom wall right up near the ceiling. He’s babysitting tonight, so he’s gotta, like, get himself together, or whatever.

All he’s done since seeing Keith is change out of his sandy clothes before heading over to Luis and Lisa’s place to wait for Nadia to get home from her friend’s house.

He rubs his eyes until he sees fireworks on the backs of his eyelids.

Maybe Nadia can give him some advice on what to do, here. He won’t see Hunk or Allura until the whole group of them meet up on Altea tomorrow, but Keith will be there, too, and Lance kinda sorta needs to talk to them _without Keith around_.

Whatever. It’s fine.

He’s…fine.

Keith doesn’t feel the same way, probably. Lance feels sure of it with a slippery disappointment in his stomach. They’ve been friends for ages, and rivals for longer, and Keith’s never done anything that made Lance think he maybe…well. Feels how Lance is feeling right now.

And Lance is…

He runs a hand through his hair, letting his arm fall and rest above his head.

Fine with it.

Lance is fine with it.

He blinks.

He, like, _actually_ is.

This one probably isn’t gonna work out, but like, it doesn’t _shatter_ him. He’s disappointed, sure, but he feels a steady sort of calm settle in his gut.

He’s okay. He’s got his family, and his friends, and a sweet-ass job, and this doesn’t mean he’s, like, worthless, or useless, or unlovable, or any of that shit. He’s a dope fuckin’ dude, and if Keith’s not into it, Lance is still good.

Lance blinks up a plastic glow-in-the-dark stars that he personally helped Nadia stick to her ceiling.

“Huh,” he says.

Maybe he really is growing up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do yall use twitter? I never do but i might start so maybe [follow me](http://twitter.com/science_lesbian) idk bro


	7. And the streets in my blood, I'm on the final run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Aw, man.” Lance flicks a pebble of pink crystal off the cliff, watching it until it’s too small to see. “I can’t believe Allura bailed. I mean…I can, actually. I totally can. Romelle could stub her toe three galaxy clusters away and Allura would hop a spaceship. But like, still.”
> 
> Keith rolls his eyes and has another drink of coffee. “You ever consider, you know.” He licks the last few blue crumbs of muffin from his fingers. “Shutting up?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Keith would call himself a strong person, he thinks, if asked. At least, usually. But there’s only so much of _Lance_ a guy can reasonably be exposed to before losing his shit at least a little bit.

It happens like this.

They go to Altea. A short, stocky Olkari scientist briefs them on the creation of a clone body for Allura. The short version is: it’s going well. Very well.

The report makes Hunk, Allura and Shiro tear up, and it makes Lance grin so wide it barely fits on his face. He’s positively buoyant for the rest of the day. The gang splits up for the day, promising to meet up for dinner before they all leave Altea. Allura gets called away to a council meeting, and Hunk corners the Olkari with a full-on list of questions about traditional Olkarion celebration foods.

Keith watches Lance’s eyes follow Allura and skim Hunk’s occupied figure before landing on Keith. Lance’s eyes sharpen. He hesitates for a millisecond, then grins. His long legs bring him quickly to Keith’s side, and before Keith knows it his left hand is wrapped in Lance’s right and he’s being pulled from the room.

“ _Speeder rentals_ ,” Lance hisses. “They’ve got speeder rentals, Keith! Allura messaged me yesterday. Someone just opened up an old shop. Come on!”

Keith’s eyes widen. He speeds up, matching pace with Lance as they wind through the castle halls to the front doors.

They argue about it quickly and heatedly, then take Keith’s ship to the rental shop. Lance gravitates instantly to a lightweight, narrow-bodied Altean speeder model that looks dangerous and very, very fast.

“Oh,” Keith says, grinning already, “ _hell_ yes.”

They pay with their handprints, and Keith selects a cherry red color while Lance perches sideways on the seat of his steel-blue model, biting his lip as he looks at a map of the city.

“Okay.” Lance looks up, eyes narrowed and mouth in a serious pout. He jabs a finger at the holographic map. “How’s this for a plan, o fearless leader?”

Keith rolls his eyes.

He ends up agreeing to the plan, because of course he does. Reason one: Lance has good plans, usually, barring the periodic asinine scheme certain to get them arrested or killed. Reason two: it’s Lance.

So. Back to how it happens.

The rental shop has, because Keith is apparently the luckiest motherfucker in the universe, a _racetrack_. Not a boring one, either: it’s got sharp drop-offs and hairpin turns, obstacles mid-track and sudden elevation changes. Lance’s plan begins here.

By the time they’ve zipped around the course four times (Keith: two; Lance: two) Keith’s face is raw from the wind and sweat lines his spine from the effort of keeping the delicately built machine balanced around the course’s sharp turns.

“Call it a tie?” he offers, grinning through hard breaths as Lance pulls to the finish a beat after him.

Lance fixes him with a suspicious look.

Keith softens his grin but doesn’t drop it, lifting one eyebrow as Lance inspects his face.

Deciding Keith’s trustworthy, Lance relaxes his expression into a smile and sticks out a hand, palm sideways for a handshake. “Nice driving, man.”

Keith grips the offered hand briefly. Lance’s fingers are long, his hand warm and slightly sticky after being curled around the speeder’s handle. “You, too.” Keith smiles and relinquishes Lance’s hand.

They’re allowed to take the speeders out in the city and surrounding areas, so Lance’s plan takes them next out of the city to one of Allura’s favorite spots, a sprawling field of vibrant pink flowers in the brightest green grass Keith has ever seen.

“Look,” Lance says, deadly serious as his deft fingers weave stems together. “They’re her favorite, right? We all gotta have flower crowns when we bring her back, dude!”

Keith rolls his eyes. “I’m not doing that.”

“Oh, whatever, Keith. We’ll talk you into it by then.” Lance’s tongue pokes out the side of his mouth. “I just wanna make sure I can make ’em, first.”

It happens like this.

Lance’s effervescent grin is soon matched by a bright circlet of flowers perched crookedly on his head. He leans back on his hands, legs outstretched, tipping his head back and closing his eyes.

Keith’s abs are tired from balancing the speeder all afternoon. His heart is tired from aching.

Lance is gilded in the sunlight, the ends of his hair caught with brightness and turned golden. The curve of his neck is half shadowed, half illuminated.

It is absolutely fucking unbelievable.

The delicate muscles around his eyes are relaxed. His nose casts a sharp shadow down one cheek. A sliver of shade rests in the dip of his cupid’s bow, and likewise below the curve of his bottom lip.

“Hey, buddy,” says Lance, casually. “You’re kinda starin’, there. At…my mouth. What’s up?”

Keith thinks ‘ _shit,_ ’ and Keith thinks ‘ _do I go for it??_ ’ and Keith thinks ‘ _no,_ Lance _would be going for it already, if he were interested_.’

“Sorry,” Keith says, meeting Lance’s now-opened eyes. “You’ve got…” He reaches for him. Not how he wants to, but close.

He rests his fingertips on the line of Lance’s jaw gently. His thumb strays to Lance’s bottom lip.

Lance watches him carefully—Keith can feel his eyes, but won’t meet them. He drags the pad of his thumb across the right corner of Lance’s lip.

It’s—warm. Soft. It gives under his touch.

His whole arm feels electrified.

He pulls it back.

“You had—something,” Keith explains, keeping his voice steady and uninterested. His insides are a forest fire.

Lance watches him thoughtfully. “Uh huh,” he says.

It happens like this: Lance is radiantly, scaldingly bright and alive, and Keith gets caught staring at his mouth, and he plays it off and everything’s fine, except _Keith_ is maybe not. Fine, that is.

Keith looks away. “We gotta take these speeders back soon,” he says to the field of flowers.

“Aww.” Lance sighs. “Yeah, you’re right.” Long legs in the edge of Keith’s vision fold. Lance gets to his feet. “Race you back!” he shouts, already jogging away.

Keith shoots upright. “You owe me a week of dog-sitting when you lose!”

He follows Lance through the flowers.

Swimming with Lance isn’t something that Keith works hard to avoid, exactly.

If it’s not hard to evade, though? Yeah, Keith takes a pass.

They’ve been hanging out all day, however, and after dinner Lance looked at him and his eyes glittered and his smile was soft and he said “Wanna hit the pool?” with a distinct note of hope in his tone, so yeah. They’re now at the pool.

It is, to Keith’s coupled burning joy and fierce discomfort, just him and Lance.

After dinner, Hunk left to deal with one of the first engineering projects he’s gotten wind of through his app. Pidge snuck off to try to hack into the Altean castle system before she had to head back to Earth to comply with her mom’s curfew, and Shiro headed out immediately after dinner, saying he had to “handle a wedding flower emergency” and that after that he was going right to bed.

“Okay,” Keith says, gathering his hair back and squeezing out some of the water.

_You should do that, like, way more often._

He pulls his hair into a ponytail.

“This was nice,” he says, keeping his tone light. “Good idea, Lance.”

Lance’s eyes fix on Keith’s neck, then slide slowly down the ridge of his shoulders and lower. He doesn’t bother to hide his stare, which. What is _that?_

Keith’s mouth is dry, but he smirks.

“I’m just glad we finally learned how to use these stupid Altean pools,” Lance says, grinning and looking away.

Keith walks the perimeter of the pool, feet hitting the white tile with quiet, wet slaps. A smile splits his face, a memory tickling in the back of his mind. “Who knew we needed to ask for instructions to use a swimming pool?”

Lance leans back on his hands, watching Keith approach. “The fact that we flew a huge lion into space and started eating green Jell-O for every meal maybe should’ve tipped us off.”

Keith smiles, folding himself down to sit beside Lance on the pool’s edge.

They fill the quiet with the gentle sloshing of their feet kicking back and forth, and the peaceful splashing of the water against the side of the pool. Lance leans forward and down for a good angle from which to flick water up at Keith’s torso, but Keith glares at him, and just this once, Lance surrenders before it escalates into a full-on water fight.

They’ve had two of those already, so maybe that’s why Lance is willing let this one go.

Keith’s eyes don’t leave him, even when Lance leans back and stops threatening to splash him. Lance looks out at the water.

Keith’s gaze trips past Lance’s ear, down his neck, catching on the pale, unruly pattern of scar tissue on Lance’s back.

Keith stills his feet in the water, feeling it ripple coolly around his ankles.

He _aches_.

“That bomb the night of the party, right?”

His voice comes out quiet.

Lance twists so Keith can see the scar better, looking over his own shoulder at it, too. He nods. The injury is long healed, but the scar tissue remains, pale and uneven in a large, jagged whirl between his shoulder blades.

The ache in Keith’s chest is somehow sharp and dull all at once. It itches like the soft pain of an old bruise; it sparks like a cut from a sharp knife.

This is Lance’s bravery and selflessness made tangible in an awful, awful way: as a shiny shape seared right into his very skin.

Lance twists around, facing Keith instead. His eyes trace down the curve of Keith’s neck.

He reaches up. Hesitates. He brings his fingertips to the shiny red line curving down Keith’s right shoulder.

Keith jerks, his eyes widening. “Sorry,” he says. “Just—no one touches it. Feels weird.”

Lance removes his hand.

“It’s fine,” Keith says, quick. “It doesn’t hurt.”

So Lance returns his fingertips to the scar.

Goosebumps spread all the way down Keith’s arm.

Lance traces the edge of the scar gently, dragging his fingers down the tapering line and then back up to the plane of Keith’s shoulder. It feels like there are sparks under Keith’s skin. He thinks hard about keeping his breathing even and unbothered.

Lance isn’t looking at him, at least. That might actually kill him.

Lance swallows. “I have one here,” he says, withdrawing his hand and gesturing to a skinny white line over his collarbone. He looks up finally, his eyes dark and unreadable. “Um, a couple here.” He indicates two dull red, irregular shapes over his left lower ribs, an elongated triangle and jagged starburst.

Keith stares at him. Slowly, he raises a hand.

He brushes down the length of the clavicle scar with his right index finger.

Water slaps the pool’s side quietly.

Lance’s chest is very still, and the air is very quiet. He’s holding his breath, Keith thinks. He bites down on a grin.

Heart in his throat, Keith drops his hand to the scars lower on Lance’s torso, rubbing his thumb across the length of the triangle. Lance’s abs twitch involuntarily. The scar is smooth under the pad of Keith’s thumb; he can feel his pulse in his temples.

Keith pulls his hand back. His voice is low when he speaks again. “I have one, um. Here.”

He shifts on the pool’s edge, turning his knee outward to better exhibit the scar there, arching from just above his knee to halfway up his thigh.

Lance reaches out. His hand hovers an inch away from Keith’s leg. Then his fingertips skim the scar tissue on Keith’s inner thigh, and Keith inhales.

Lance trails his fingers up the length of the scar, slow. Keith feels shuddery, like if Lance keeps touching him so lightly, he might break out in full-body shivers. His thigh is halfway tensed; he’s holding himself very still. He’s a fucking idiot for inviting this to happen.

Lance reverses the line of his fingers, drifting them back down the scar toward Keith’s knee. Keith feels dizzy.

Lance takes his hand back.

They both take a quiet, deep breath.

Keith steals a furtive look at Lance. His…His cheeks are pink.

What the hell is going on? Keith’s _sure_ Lance isn’t into him: he would’ve acted on it before now.

Yet everything about this is blatantly intimate in a flavor that Keith would very much not call ‘friendly.’

Lance throws himself forward into the water without warning. “Race you,” he says, surfacing to smirk up at Keith.

Keith blinks a few times. The disturbed water ripples around his legs in little waves. He narrows his eyes. “That’s not fair. You swim all the time.”

Lance sticks out his tongue. His face is flushed. “You piece of fuck, I was just up close and personal with those thighs. Don’t bullshit me. It’d be impossible for you not to be fast!”

Keith’s face goes hot. Sliding into the water, he growls, “Two laps. Loser buys takeout.” And he kicks off from the wall and starts swimming like hell.

Laughing, Lance follows.

The shock of cool water is wonderful against Keith’s warm cheeks and prickling skin.

He’s got a good, powerful kick. He has a slight head start.

Lance demolishes him regardless.

This whole ‘not being able to breathe whenever you want to’ thing is weirdly hard? Keith still might’ve been fine. He tries for a flip turn, though, and it’s maybe the least graceful thing he’s done in his _life_.

Keith buys cheap takeout, and they eat it sitting side by side on a small bench in the middle of the night-quiet city.

Lance’s cheeks stay lit from within with a gentle shade of pink. He keeps not quite meeting Keith’s eyes.

Keith thinks, sharply, _What_.

He’s not… _mad_ at Allura, exactly. He gets it.

Still, there’s no way to pretend it’s not one-hundred percent on her that Keith is sitting up here, coffee cup in one hand and a strangely colored breakfast muffin in the other, alone with Lance in the early hours of the Altean morning.

He and Lance had stayed in castle guest rooms last night, since it was stupidly late by the time they finished swimming, shoveling greasy takeout into their mouths, and then staring up at Altea’s local constellations, pointing out ones they recognized and making shit up when their memories failed, sharing tired laughter between them at silly fake stories.

Everything is exactly the same as it has always been. Keith likes fast speeders and competition and cheap takeout, and Lance likes the same things, so they gravitate, naturally, toward each other. Keith also likes, a little too much, the bright slice of Lance’s smile—likes it in a way that stings like a cut inside his chest, weeping red even though he waits and waits and waits for it to scab over.

It doesn’t scab. But all this is nothing new.

There is an open wound gaping inside him, and it bleeds and widens with each dazzling smile sent his way. He’s been victim to a lot of those heart-shuddering smiles, in the last day. The open scrape has had no time to even _try_ to heal.

And now here they sit, feet dangling from a cliff above Altea’s zyo-crystal springs below, pink and teal unfurled before and below them like a dream edged with white steam. It is just the two of them. Altea’s leading sun pokes its sleepy head above the horizon, sending delicate, watery morning light streaming across the land. They are here because this is Allura’s favorite spot, and Allura had invited them for a last visit before they each departed for work on different planets.

Yet where is Allura? Hunk’s café.

She sent an apologetic text once Keith and Lance had already made their way up the winding path to the springs, crossed the pink crystalline plain, and scaled the far cliffs to perch on the very edge, Altea’s capital city winking in the distance as the tall white buildings caught the thin morning light.

_So sorry, paladins! Something has come up. Unfortunately, I am needed to assist Romelle in opening the café this morning. Please do enjoy the sunrise without me!_

This makes exactly no sense, because Allura is a _hologram_ , and Keith can think of exactly zero opening tasks with which she might be able to assist. But Lance shouts with laughter and shoves Keith in the shoulder, hard, and says with glittering eyes “Oh, girl’s got it so bad,” so like. Keith gets it. So, he’s not mad, exactly.

He’s _something_ , though—bitter, maybe—because now here he is, with his coffee, and the sunrise, and Lance, and so much emotional internal bleeding that he thinks he should be going into hemorrhagic shock pretty soon now.

From below, the rushing sound of a spring beginning to boil comes just faintly. At Keith’s side, Lance goes at his coffee with an obnoxious slurp. The ache thrills in Keith’s chest.

“Aw, man.” Lance flicks a pebble of pink crystal off the cliff, watching it until it’s too small to see. “I can’t believe Allura bailed. I mean…I can, actually. I totally can. Romelle could stub her toe three galaxy clusters away and Allura would hop a spaceship. But like, still.”

Keith rolls his eyes and has another drink of coffee. “You ever consider, you know.” He licks the last few blue crumbs of muffin from his fingers. “Shutting up?”

“Hey!” Lance squawks. He swats mildly at Keith’s shoulder.

“We’re on an alien planet on pink crystal cliffs, watching the first of two suns rise. And you still won’t stop _talking._ ” Keith waves a hand at the horizon. “It’s fucking—beautiful. Come on.”

“Hey, when you’re such a beautiful view yourself, you can get away with running your mouth all day.” Lance spreads his hands to the sides, a smug smile curving his mouth.

“For fuck’s sake,” Keith says dully.

Lance throws a muffin crumb at him. “Oh, come on!”

He swings his feet in the air. Blue-and-gray sneakers have been upgraded, somewhere along the way, to a respectable pair of brown boots.

“You could get away with plenty too if you wanted, pretty boy.” Lance’s smirk is quick and easy. Laughter glitters in his eyes as he winks at Keith.

Keith narrows his eyes.

He considers this statement.

He weighs the feeling of Lance’s eyes on him; the teasing upturn of Lance’s mouth; the depth in his gaze; the phantom feeling of his eyes and hands on Keith’s skin last night by the water.

Keith surges in hard and inevitable like tide to shore. He shapes a hand to the back of Lance’s neck, the other curling tight around his coffee mug

His lips meet Lance’s smirk.

The smirk falls, and then Lance’s mouth is all warmth and softness, his lips going lazy under the brush of Keith’s against them. Keith’s gut clenches and his pulse hums in his ears and there’s a jittering flame in him that’s trying to burn him from the inside out.

He lets go. He sits back.

His mouth is on fire.

Lance is…staring at him. He says, slowly, lifting a hand halfway to his mouth and hovering it there, “What.” He licks his lips. “Was that?”

Keith’s stomach plummets off the cliffside. He says, “Fuck.” He drags a hand back through his hair. “Sorry. Should’ve gone with words and not shoved myself at you.”

He drops his hand to his lap, curling it into a fist. “I—care about you.” He glares out at the horizon. “Look. This won’t fuck anything up. I have a handle on it.”

He curls his fist tighter.

“I just…had to put it out there. But…I don’t expect shit from you, okay?” He frowns. “You don’t owe me anything. And this doesn’t have to change anything. If you need… _time_ , or something, I get it. But—please, this doesn’t have to change anything. I’m good. I swear.”

He looks at Lance, who is…just sitting there. Motionlessly. Two fingertips of his right hand are touching his bottom lip, just resting there. His coffee has been abandoned beside him.

“Lance,” Keith says, but Lance starts shaking his head, faster and then faster.

“Nope. Nu-uh.” He takes his hand from his mouth to point a finger at Keith. “You. Stop talking.” He frowns, narrowing his eyes at Keith. “You _like me?_ ”

Keith swallows. “Yeah.”

“What the _fuck,_ ” says Lance.

Keith feels cold panic from his throat to his stomach.

“You,” Lance says, pointing his finger more aggressively, “Keith Kogane. Paladin of the Black Lion of Voltron. Basically one of the founders of New Daibazaal. Fucking reformer of the Blade of Marmora. Prodigy goddamn pilot; super-secret alien spy boy—You. Keith. Like _me?_ ”

Lance is…glaring. He’s…mad. But he’s, like, complimenting Keith?

Keith’s head spins and his stomach feels hollow despite the weird-colored muffin. “Why…” He licks his lips. “What are you saying?” He shakes his head. “Lance, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for liking me, you _huge fucking dumbass!_ ” Lance yells.

Keith blinks at him.

“That’s—that’s fucking dope, man!” Lance’s eyes are wide. His hands fly around wildly. “That’s _awesome!_ Don’t apologize!”

Keith stares at him, nose scrunching with something between confusion and frustration. “What?”

Lance rolls his eyes so hard his head tips back with it. He flattens his hands and tucks in his thumbs, palms parallel, angling his fingers toward Keith. He says slowly, as if talking to a child, “I like you, Keith.”

Keith stares at him. “ _What?_ ” Keith frowns, shaking his head. “No, you don’t! You would’ve acted on it by now!”

“You’re fucking _Keith_ , why would I _act on it!?”_ Lance shouts. “I mean, plus I didn’t even realize I liked you until recently.” He frowns. “But even if I had, I love our friendship! And you’re like, galaxies out of my league, dude! So no, of course I didn’t act on it.”

Keith’s jaw drops. He grits out, “ _What?_ ”

Lance is glaring at him.

“Lance, _what the fuck_ ,” Keith says.

Lance sniffs, turning up his nose. How is Lance fucking _mad at him right now?_ Why are they _fighting?_

“Lance,” Keith says, fighting to keep his voice level instead of just angry. It just makes his voice come out low and kinda dead. “You’re the one who’s out of my league.”

Lance’s eyes narrow. He won’t look at Keith.

“You’re—you’re smart,” Keith says to Lance’s cheek. “And sensitive. You're good at _people_ -stuff.”

Lance’s scowl relaxes a minute increment.

Keith gestures at nothing with his hand, a sharp, irritated motion. “And then on top of that you’re a sick pilot, and a great fighter, and—and the power of your friendship manifested weird lights on your fucking face, man!”

He can feel that his own eyes have gone wide with some cross of desperation and agitation.

“You’re so… _powerful_ ,” he decides, is the word, “because you love people so much! Because other people love _you_ that much. _Lance_. Jesus _fuck_.”

Lance is considering the pale blue sky very, very seriously. He looks like he’s got some questions for it. Real intense ones.

Keith takes a deep breath. “Lance.” He unfurls his fist, flattening his palm against his thigh. “Look. I’m not…good at this. But you’re—”

Keith makes a noise in his throat, a groan cut off before it can be free.

“You’re _amazing_ , okay?” Keith is glaring, now, too, and looking off into the sky. “You…helped me organize the home I wanted, somehow? And you invited me into _your_ home. And you made a place for me in Voltron, even though I didn’t hardly interact with anyone at all before that. You pulled me in with your stupid rivalry thing, and then you made a big fucking deal about accepting me as the Black Paladin, and I—I couldn’t have done it without you. Any of it.

“And, like, your bayard turns into a _way_ bigger sword than mine, and I can’t even be jealous because you look so fucking _good_ with it!? Which is the _weirdest_ feeling. Look, I don’t know what to— _do_ with any of this. Or how to tell you how important you are. But I love you, and if you keep saying negative things about yourself, I—!”

Well.

He doesn’t know what he’ll do.

Also, he just admitted he _loves_ Lance.

He snaps his jaw shut.

He looks at Lance, finally. Lance is finally looking at him, too.

Lance’s cheeks are _very_ red. Keith is fascinated in a way that wrenches hard in his gut. He lifts his hand without even thinking about it, brushing fingertips to Lance’s cheekbone.

Lance closes his eyes, silently, subtly leaning into the touch.

Keith’s veins sluice with liquid fire.

Lance tilts his chin up and turns his face so he can bump his nose into Keith’s palm, nuzzling against it and fitting the palm to his cheek. “You stupid idiot,” he murmurs.

Keith scowls.

He doesn’t pull his hand away.

“You complete piece of shit, not telling me,” Lance says into Keith’s skin.

Keith snatches his hand away.

“How _long_ have you—” Lance starts, then opens his eyes and stops with a shake of his head. “We could’ve been making out _ages_ ago. I’m so pissed.”

He leans in to press his mouth to Keith’s, and Keith feels like the rising sun has lit him on fire.

“I hate you right now,” Lance says against Keith’s lips.

Keith punches his shoulder, but not hard enough to push him away.

Lance grins into a kiss, curling his fingers around Keith’s shoulders and gripping tight.

“I’m mad at you,” Lance says into Keith’s mouth.

“Uh-huh,” Keith says back, eyes closed, fingertips learning the softness of the dip at the small of Lance’s back.

“I mean it.” Lance tries to pull back a few inches, and Keith lifts a hand to cradle the back of his head and pull him back in.

Lance bites his lower lip, then pulls away with a cackle when Keith makes a startled sound of protest high in his throat, and then lunges back into a new kiss before Keith can even get his eyes open.

Keith wants to spend the rest of his life with Lance’s tongue in his mouth. He wants to die like this. Maybe right now. It’s—Lance. That’s all it is. His mouth is warm and soft like mouths tend to be, and he tastes like those blue muffins and coffee, and he laughs through his nose here and there in a very Lance kind of way, and it’s…everything. Because Lance is everything.

The wound inside of Keith’s ribcage stops bleeding. Instead, his heart _flames_. It still _hurts_ , sort of. But it’s a good kind of ache.

Lance sighs gently into Keith’s mouth, and Keith thinks, fiercely, that he doesn’t want this ache to ever go away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](http://twitter.com/science_lesbian) | [tumb](http://lesbianlura.tumblr.com)


	8. And I'm feelin' so fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The string lights and the brighter flood lights bordering the reception area create a haven of incandescence within the purple-blue night, a soft blossom of brightness. Everything is silver and white and glimmering, around Lance and within him.

They get the call, and everything goes absolutely batshit.

The chaos is reminiscent of when Lisa went into labor the first time. Texts are sent and calls are made. Current tasks are dumped in a heap on the floor. Ready-packed bags are snatched up from doorways. Speed limits are ignored. Everyone jumbles together and crowds in tight, and everyone wants to help but it’s not like there’s actually anything anyone can _do_.

So they just…wait. Anticipation simmers, making the air thick and everyone jumpy.

It’s what happened when Lance became an uncle, and it’s what happens now when Pidge sends a one-way message to all of them, a short video clip of herself shrieking: “It’s ready! It’s ready! Body’s ready to go! Get your asses to Altea, now!”

The main difference this time is that their “family” is scattered all across the universe, and a few more wormholes and spaceships are involved in getting everyone there.

They all crowd into the hangar near the Blue Lion, where a body is laid on a hovering gurney, tubes and wires and beeping machines surrounding and hooked up to it. It is _deeply_ weird, especially with hologram-Allura standing right there.

Romelle holds one of the body’s hands in both of her own, but her gaze holds holo-Allura’s eyes.

“Whenever you’re ready, my dear,” says Coran.

A gaggle of Olkari scientists cluster near the head of the body. Allura’s family lines the other edges of the gurney; all the paladins of Voltron are present, plus Adam, Coran, Romelle, and a couple other Alteans.

The cloning process was a collaborative but Olkari-led project, but this part—the consciousness transfer part, the supernatural pseudo-science—is more the specialty of Coran, Allura, and Romelle.

Romelle closes her eyes.

Coran has advised them against touching the body during the process, which is easier said than done. Lance’s fingers twitch where they rest on the white sheets.

The body itself is dressed in one of Allura’s nightgowns. It’s weirdly real, weirdly gentle, and weirdly not-Allura. Allura is standing right there, her eyes closed and her bottom lip caught in her teeth. Lance’s fingers twitch again.

The blue marks on Romelle’s cheeks begin to glow. She inhales deeply, and watching her, so does Lance. His heart is trying to split open his ribs.

Static fizzes Allura’s hologram. The image steadies; Allura opens her eyes, blinking.

Then the hologram flicks out of existence.

“Allura—!” Lance’s fingers spasm; he jerks forward, unthinking.

“Lance,” Coran says, but Lance is already grasping Allura’s forearm, frowning down at the body.

“Lu,” he says, around the heart in his throat. “Hey, where’d you go? Allura?”

“Lance,” says Romelle, frowning with her mouth and her eyebrows. She looks ready to reprimand him, but then her eyes widen and her forehead relaxes. She blinks at him. “Lance…your face.”

Lance stares at her, shaking his head. “What…oh, whoa.” A tingling sensation burns his cheekbones in two little slivers that match the location where he knows Allura’s marks lie. He grips Allura’s arm tighter, holding Romelle’s gaze.

She narrows her eyes at him. Her marks shine even brighter.

Lance isn’t sure if everyone around him is holding their breath, or if he just can’t hear anything over the nervous exhilaration roaring in his head.

Romelle’s Altean marks flare; Lance’s cheeks briefly burn hot. He blinks a few times rapidly.

There is a cough.

Wide-eyed, Lance looks down.

Allura’s nose is scrunched, her eyes still closed. A thin scowl pulls her mouth. She sniffs, then coughs again, then opens her eyes, squinting against the light.

“You should close your mouth, Lance,” she says drily. “What is the Earth saying? ‘You’ll catch flies’?”

Lance's eyes sting; warmth courses down his cheek.

Allura smiles up at him, and he clings to her forearm and fucking sobs. He’s not the only one. Through blurry vision, he can see Shiro and Pidge sniffling, and Hunk and Coran bawling just as hard as he is. Even Keith’s looking a little watery, if that’s not just Lance’s own tears messing with his eyesight.

“Hey, ’Lu,” Lance croaks, sliding his grip down her arm to squeeze her hand. He knows he’s monopolizing prime real estate, here, but it’s too hard to let go.

He gives her a watery smile. “It’s good to have you back.”

She frowns gently, reaching a hand up to brush Lance’s cheekbone. “They’re gone,” she says. “Your marks are gone.”

Lance blinks down at her, everything gone vaguely swimming-pool through the tears in his eyes. “What? Wait a minute.” He reaches for her cheekbone, dragging his thumb over the blue glowing mark that rests there. “Were these always here? Didn’t they used to be pink?”

“No, the clone body contained less of Allura’s magical energy than her original body!” says Coran, brightly. “We hoped it would transfer along with her consciousness. By the looks of things, some of Allura’s energy must have been transferred back to her from _you_ , Lance!” Coran is positively beaming. “Amazing!”

Lance says, “Oh.” He can feel everyone’s eyes on him, heavy. He sniffs loudly. “Well. Dope.”

The weird moment snaps. Hunk laughs in a snuffly sort of manner.

“How are you feeling?” Shiro asks Allura, wiping at his eyes like he can pretend he’s not crying.

Lance relinquishes Allura’s hand so that Shiro can take a turn holding it, moving over a step to hang onto her shoulder instead.

Allura considers the question. “I feel all right, I believe,” she decides. “Thank you, Shiro.”

Hunk wails, just quietly. Lance flips him off over Allura, because it doesn’t help _him_ stop crying when Hunk’s over there totally losing it. Hunk laughs thickly, and Pidge rolls her teary eyes at both of them.

Allura sits up, stirring a flurry of movement as everyone strives simultaneously to both stay out of the way and help her up. She smiles, amusement twinkling in her eyes. She sits up with no apparent difficulty.

Romelle’s hand rises in the direction of Allura’s back, then freezes. She swallows and lowers her hand. Lance narrows his eyes. Romelle sets her mouth in a small frown and looks away from him. Pink dusts her cheeks.

“Allura,” Lance says, squeezing her shoulder. “Dude. I’ve got _news_.”

Allura raises a dainty eyebrow.

Grinning, Lance extends his free hand, reaching around Shiro to grab for Keith’s hand. “Yeah! Me-and- _Keith_ news.” He raises his eyebrows pointedly and lifts Keith’s hand, wiggling it in the air so Allura can see over Shiro’s head. “Like, me and Keith are _me-and-Keith_ now.”

The annoyed set of Keith’s jaw looks more like he’s fighting a grin than like he’s actually annoyed. He looks away.

Allura’s smile is warm. “That’s wonderful, Lance.”

Lance rolls his eyes. “Right, right, yeah. The _point is_.” He narrows his eyes at her. “The _point_ is, is there anything _you_ wanna… _admit_ to? Hmm?”

Allura stares at him, mouth open. “You really want kicking your ass to be the first thing I do in this body, don’t you?”

Lance laughs, trying to catch Romelle’s eye. She won’t look at him.

“What did it feel like when you entered the body, Allura?” Pidge wants to know. She shoves her glasses up, her eyes shining behind them.

Allura is saved, for the moment, from Lance’s haranguing. Keith isn’t, though. Lance swings their joined hands back and forth behind Shiro’s back, grinning as Keith’s grip on his stoicism slips and a grudging smile shapes his mouth.

Days pass. Lance is not allowed to be at Allura’s side one-hundred percent of the time, which is a goddamn pain in the ass.

“Lance,” Keith says to him, the hand on Lance’s forearm steady and reassuring, “they have to run tests to make sure the body is functioning properly. She has to _sleep_.”

Lance makes a face at him. “Oh, like she can’t sleep while I hold her hand?”

He gives in, though, because all of Keith’s points are true, and because Pidge and a whole lot of scientists collectively glare at him, and also because Allura tells him to.

Adam and Shiro schedule their wedding for seven days out as soon as Allura gets the full medical thumbs-up three days after the consciousness transfer. It makes their anniversary ten days after her re-birthday date, which means Lance is gonna get to plan some _sick_ parties. Ten-day-long celebrations every year, man! Hell yeah.

Allura dips her bare toes in the zyo-crystal springs, and she, Lance and Hunk all cry. She kisses Romelle for the first time in Hunk’s café one early morning, and Lance and Hunk cheer with all the energy of a packed football stadium, and Allura threatens them with dismemberment. It’s goddamn awesome.

They schedule a trip to the garden on Daibazaal for two days before the wedding. Keith’s mom will have just been officially voted an interplanetary representative, so Keith, not meeting anyone’s eyes, asked them all if they’d come to lunch at his place to celebrate. Lance isn’t sure he’s ever been prouder in his life.

Passing under the arched garden entry, Allura touches the wide purple leaves of the draping ambicor plants. She acquaints her fingertips with many plants as they walk the paths. A huge, flat leaf that’s green and almost Earth-like shushes back into place after she drags her fingers along its smooth surface.

The air in this section of the garden smells like wet and dirt and green, overpowering Daibazaal’s normal dust-hot smell; the scent is robust, and Lance breathes it in, knowing Allura’s smelling the all the same things. He exhales easier than he has in a couple of years.

He can’t resist bumping his shoulder against hers approximately every third step. This doesn’t go unnoticed. Keith’s eyes tip skyward, not _quite_ rolling.

Keith’s bumping the backs of his knuckles against Lance’s hand just about as frequently though, so. Pot to the kettle, and all that.

Lance realizes, with a warm delight that burns a home for itself in his chest, that he doesn’t even have to vocalize his teasing. He just smirks, casting his eyes Keith’s way. Keith notices, like Keith is always noticing Lance. (This, too, ignites Lance’s chest cavity.)

Keith looks away from him with a small, tight scowl that Lance can read as embarrassment.

Two steps later, his left knuckles brush Lance’s right hand. Allura’s feet don’t hover inches above the ground anymore, but Lance sure feels like his are.

They ignore the bench in the statue alcove. On the gray stone ground, Shiro and Pidge spread an old tablecloth, green-checkered and with a raggedy hole in one corner. “Dog,” is all Pidge says in explanation.

Hunk sets down his gigantic wicker basket with great care. Pidge tries to slip her hand in, but Hunk slaps it away with a frown. One by one, he retrieves items from the picnic basket himself, carefully laying out a feast of snacks and comfort food from many a culture.

Allura traces the edge of the alcove with slow steps, her fingers detouring to brush each plant she passes. Daibazaal’s short, spiky trees are surrounded by tall, yellow-leaved bushes that Lance recognizes from Altea. Juniberries decorate the ground with bursts of pink, nestled among that white, flowery moss native to Daibazaal, as well as some other plants that Lance is pretty sure are also Altean. It’s a gorgeous microcosm of cooperation, a plant-based collage of soft, bright colors born from two different planets.

Allura’s lingering footsteps carry her to the statues held close within the embrace of bright yellow leaves, standing in tall, pale, marble relief just off the pavement. Her father’s arm is around her mother in the statue, both of them wearing gentle smiles.

Allura’s feet go still, and so does the rest of her, motionless like a held breath.

Shiro moves to her side without a word.

Allura lifts a hand, fingers resting on her father’s gray stone forearm. She lingers there a moment, suspended like an object at the peak of its arc before it turns and falls.

She sinks back a step, accepting the curve of Shiro’s offered arm around her back and turning her face into his shoulder.

Ten steps take Lance across the alcove, ground hard beneath his boots, cooling night air still faintly warm against his skin. On the other side from Shiro, he grips Allura’s hand in both of his. She squeezes, hard. Turned away from Lance, her shoulders are stiff with tension. He draws circles on the back of her hand with his thumb, repetitive, gentle.

Alfor gazes out over the alcove, regal and unseeing while some kids who just fought a war lay out a picnic blanket and unpack some kettle corn. Melenor is steady and stately at his side, her marble eyes as sharp, strong, and sightless as his.

Allura’s shoulders rise with a slow inhale. A long exhale takes some of the tension with it.

Behind them, Hunk and Pidge talk in low voices. Hunk exhales a giggle. Plastic packaging crinkles, and Tupperware is snapped open.

Allura breathes, and she detaches her face from the shelter of Shiro’s shoulder, and she squeezes Lance’s hand once before letting it go. She turns toward the tablecloth, food, and friends, her eyes gleaming with tears that she wipes away before they can fall.

From the basket have been unearthed corn chips, mashed potatoes, and Coca Cola. There are crunchy purple rectangles about the size of graham crackers that Allura grabs for immediately, and that taste a bit like tortilla soup when Lance bites into one.

She sits down cross-legged on the green tablecloth, wearing a loose Altean blouse in a style similar to the one Romelle usually wears and a pair of blue jeans that makes Lance’s heart collapse in his chest for some reason. He sits close enough for his knee to touch hers, grinning as she pauses shoving food into her mouth to smile at him sheepishly, purple crumbs coating her mouth.

More and more food emerges from the basket, almost exclusively things that Lance doesn’t recognize. Allura seems excited by each new addition to the offering, snatching up a sample of nearly everything. Hunk produces from the basket a paper plate and plastic utensils, and she eagerly scoops more kinds of food onto her plate. Lance’s heart hurts so badly with love that he thinks he might fall over and die.

Keith sits on his other side, and Lance entertains himself lobbing pieces of kettle corn at Keith’s face while Allura is busy stuffing hers. A popcorn throwing and catching competition begins. Hunk and Lance demonstrate their total dominance, though Shiro and Keith are frighteningly good. Allura shrieks, eyes bright with laughter, and scoots backward with a protective arm around her plate. Caramel-y pieces of popcorn crunch with everyone’s each movement for the rest of the night, being ground into the tablecloth in finer and finer dust.

The competition dies down. Allura empties her plate. Hunk puts away in the basket the containers that have been emptied.

It’s well and thoroughly twilight by the time the pleasant stream of constant conversation finally lulls. Fading sunlight suffuses the sky, lingering in a fragile, gauzy glow. The desert heat drains with the disappearance of the sun, leaving cool breeze behind. The bright shades of the plants in the alcove are faded by the dimness, everything painted in gray-purple overtones.

“I wanted to thank you, Keith,” Allura says, folding her hands in her lap, spine straight. “It was lovely for you to invite us for lunch this afternoon.”

Keith shrugs one shoulder, his smile small but present. “Thanks for coming.” His eyes pass over each of them. Shiro is leaning back on his flesh arm, features more relaxed than Lance has seen in a long time. Hunk watches Keith with a slight smile, gentle and encouraging. Keith’s eyes touch Lance, and Lance is a coal, glowing.

Keith says it with hardly a tinge of embarrassment. “You guys are my family, you know?” He half smiles, crooked.

Lance is on fire with how much he loves him.

He does. Love Keith, that is. He does, he does—it’s blatant now that he’s stopped mistaking it for jealousy, or for a different kind of love.

“Aww, buddy,” Hunk says. “We love you, man.” Which really, Lance thinks, is great comedic timing.

He says, “Yeah,” and winks at Keith, which makes Pidge snort and Hunk roll his eyes fondly.

“You’re mine, as well,” says Allura, her smile warm and fierce despite its tremble. “All of you…You’re my family, too.”

Lance nudges her knee with his.

Nodding, Shiro says, “I’m honored, Allura. Keith. And—the same goes for me. You guys are my family.”

“Okay,” Hunk says, voice edged with a telling thickness. “Cut it out before I start crying.” He rustles in the picnic basket. “Um. That’s all the food I packed. Do you guys want some tea? Romelle made some from epiris moss.”

_That’s_ what those little white flowers are called.

Allura hears ‘Romelle’ and says “Oh, yes, please. Thank you, Hunk.”

Keith accepts, too, and so do Shiro and Lance, and Pidge looks at the paper cup offered to her suspiciously, then downs the whole thing in under a minute. Lance bonks the rim of his paper cup against Keith’s in a soundless ‘cheers.’

The remnant twilight glow of sun fades, leaving deep, dark sky and sharpening the glint of the peppered stars.

Time passes, swallowed by the dark and the garden and the easy company.

Lance finishes his tea. It’s sweet, with a harsh edge of spice that stings pleasantly in his throat. The teasing brush of Keith’s knuckles becomes the soft, warm press of Keith’s palm against his, the slightly sweaty lock of their fingers together.

“My father would’ve been so proud of you all,” Allura says after some interval. “For ending it all. For being the paladins he always envisioned.”

“He would’ve been proud of _you_ , Allura,” Shiro says, and Allura’s glimmering eyes flood over.

She says, “Thank you,” in a choked whisper, a tear streaking down her cheek.

Lance puts his free hand on her knee, palm up, for her to take if she wants it.

She does.

Time ticks.

Night swallows them, only the light reflected by Daibazaal’s collection of moons keeping them in faint, silvery illumination. A dainty, butterfly-ish thing quivers through the air, resting on a night-deepened pink juniberry flower. The creature’s several wings are translucent, a creamy color that emits the gentlest of glow. Allura points to it, making sure Lance has noticed, and he nods, transfixed by the flutter of its wings, the soft light cast over the juniberry petals.

Hunk keeps yawning.

Lance is pretty sure Shiro is already asleep. He’d laid back some time ago, hand pillowed behind his head, and he hasn’t moved in some time. Pidge, curled on her side next to Shiro, is definitely sleeping. At Lance’s side, so is Keith.

(He’d taken his hand out of Lance’s long enough to lie down, one hand resting on his chest, eyes cast up at the stars. Then he’d re-laced their fingers. Lance burns from the inside-out.)

He and Allura watch the butterfly until it leaves, minutes later. Then they watch the stars.

Lance doesn’t know the constellations here like he does on Earth. Here, the stars have strange patterns that are growing slowly familiar like a new language on his tongue.

The sky is so dark, the stars so clear, that it feels like he could reach out a hand and touch them. They are _just_ beyond reach, almost tangible, almost within grasp.

Lance squeezes Allura’s hand. 

Keith has smiled more today than Lance has ever seen before. He can’t seem to stop.

He looks just _devastatingly_ good today, even before he puts on that stunner of a grin. His hair is clean and styled, which Lance is goddamn thrilled about, tied back at the nape of his neck. He’s in a white suit, like all of them, with a rich red vest breaking the monochrome white of the jacket and dress shirt. And then on top of all that he wears a _smile_ , and Lance is a smitten, smitten man.

He keeps winking at Keith across the sprawling, glittering reception area, trying to catch his eye and win a grudging, exasperated smile just for himself. Keith’s preoccupied, though, wrangling a mic cord and looking paler than he has all night.

The reception is sheltered by a delicate ceiling of string lights that hang in graceful arcs between wooden support beams erected specifically for tonight. Tables, chairs, generators, food, a dance floor and more have been flown out to the middle of the desert for a bright reception under the starry night sky.

Lance snags a fluted glass from a passing tray, sniffing the golden, fizzing contents to be sure it’s champagne and not nunville before taking a sip. He lifts his glass to Keith as Keith steps to the front edge of the dancefloor, knuckles white around the microphone. Lance winks at him, and Keith looks away, swallowing.

Lance has yet to hear Keith’s best man speech. Hunk has heard it a few times over, but Keith stayed stingy with it other than that, no matter how much Lance whined.

The music drops to a low background murmur. Keith clears his throat into the mic.

To Lance’s right, Allura nudges his shoulder with her own, and they share a grin.

“I’m Keith,” says Keith, “Shiro’s best man. If I’d known I had to give a speech I might’ve said no, but, uh.” He smiles, small and wry, as the audience seated at round, white-clothed tables laughs gently.

“Anyway. Hunk helped me out with this. I hope it turned out okay. Lance wasn’t allowed to help, because—and, Adam and Shiro, this is the first part of your wedding gift—I love him too much and I didn’t think I could take it.”

Lance feels his heart make a bid for the starry tapestry of sky above them. Keith is not looking his way for an eyebrow wiggle, which is a damn shame.

There’s scattered laughter and _aww_ -ing from the crowd, and Adam raises a victorious fist into the air. At his side, Shiro’s face manages to display perfectly blended exasperation and glee. Lance is fizzy inside like a fluted glass of pale champagne.

Allura’s shoulder shoves into Lance, her eyes glittering with laughter. He just grins, goddamn jubilant.

Keith levels a finger at Adam and Shiro. “You’re allowed to tease me for one week. That’s it.” He smiles, small. “Congratulations.”

On Allura’s other side, Hunk taps his glass with a spoon. “The rest of the speech, man! Come on!”

The crowd laughs again, and Keith’s smile widens, amusement bright in his eyes as he glances at the table loaded with his friends.

“Yeah, yeah.” He licks his lips, re-gripping the mic and straightening the hem of his suit jacket. “Um. When I was a kid, there was a time I thought I would never matter to anyone.” Keith swallows visibly. “Shiro, you proved me wrong, and it changed my life.”

The string lights and the brighter flood lights bordering the reception area create a haven of incandescence within the purple-blue night, a soft blossom of brightness. Everything is silver and white and glimmering, around Lance and within him.

“When I lost my dad,” says Keith, “I thought I would never have a family again.”

He switches the mic to his other hand. Lance only notices the tremble in the fingers that drop to Keith’s side because Keith told him he worried his hands would shake during the speech.

“Shiro and Adam were the first ones to prove me wrong.” He inhales through his mouth. His eyes linger shut on a long blink, and when they open, Lance can see the rare shine in his dark eyes that means tears are imminent.

“You guys changed my life then, too.”

Keith’s voice is getting thicker.

“Then I watched things come up in your relationship,” he says, eyes on Adam and Shiro. One tear makes a break for it, sprinting down Keith’s cheek. “And I thought there was some amount of distance you could put between people where love wouldn’t be enough anymore.” He sniffs.

Lance steals a look at Shiro to see that his eyes are bright with liquid, too. He can hear Hunk snuffling a couple chairs away.

“You guys proved me wrong again,” says Keith, his voice distinctly strangled. “And I’m so glad you did. You guys prove—” He exhales, hard, a huffing half-laugh at himself as he wipes at his eyes. “You guys prove that no amount of distance, time, or hardship is too much for love to overcome.”

He’s just straight-up crying now, cheeks wet, smile bright but trembling.

“I love you guys. So much. Galaxies between us couldn’t stop me.” He takes a deep, ragged breath.“Thank you for proving me wrong so many times. Thank you for changing my life.” He exhales.

“Seeing you guys so happy is—amazing. You deserve this. You’ve always inspired me, and your love and happiness does, too. You’re my brother, Shiro.” He closes his eyes, swallowing visibly.

Hot emotion jams Lance’s own throat.

“I love you so much,” Keith croaks. “Congratulations.”

Shiro gets up to hug him, and Keith cries into the shoulder of Shiro’s white suit. Lance beams, even as emotion stings his own eyes. At his side, Allura cries in a very princess-like manner, perfectly composed save for the tears shimmering down her cheeks. Hunk is outright bawling.

Keith disentangles himself from Shiro eventually, freeing him to return to Adam.

Keith wanders back to their table, his eyes wide and his mouth a thin, wobbling line. The set of his jaw is determined despite the remaining glossiness of his eyes.

“That was beautiful, man,” Lance says when Keith throws himself back into the chair to Lance’s left. Keith shoves at him.

“I mean it! Come on, dude.”

Keith digs a tissue from his pants pocket and then sinks forward, resting his elbows on his knees and blowing his nose. Lance’s hand goes to the small of Keith’s back like a magnet, natural, unthinking. He rubs slow, soothing circles, feeling some of the tension leave Keith’s spine.

“That shit about believing in love across galaxies?” Lance pats his free hand against his chest. “Got me right here, man.”

“Whatever,” Keith warbles, but his mouth is bent upward in a little smile when he tips his head sideways to meet Lance’s eyes, not yet sitting upright. His gaze is soft. Lance’s veins thrum with electric happiness.

Keith removes one elbow from his knee, reaching over to lace his fingers through Lance’s.

“Hey!” Lance squawks. “Gross, dude! You _just_ blew your nose!”

Keith raises an eyebrow. “Love can overcome galaxies, but not a little bit of your boyfriend’s snot?”

Lance nods, solemn. “Yeah. _Exactly_.”

Keith snorts.

Lance doesn’t take his hand back.

The night spirals on, glittering and warm and music-laden. Lance looks up at the sky, his hand cocooned in Keith’s. The stars are faint and small beyond the closer-hanging string lights, shedding their warm glow across the whole reception.

Allura’s shoulder rests lightly against his own where she’s half turned away, speaking with someone Lance doesn’t know.

The desert is warm even at night, the breeze not cool, just a soft brush against Lance’s skin.

Adam spins Shiro on the dancefloor, and the crowd cheers.

Lance’s black shoes are dusted with red-tan desert dirt; he’s sweating in his three-piece, wishing mildly that they’d had an indoor reception.

His palm is particularly damp. His hand hasn’t been separated from Keith’s for at least an hour.

The stars are far-off glints; the string lights are close and large and butter-yellow.

Everything is here; everything is real; everything is within reach. It’s not like Lance could reach out and touch the stars—but he doesn’t need to. Everything important is already within his grasp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if u wanna Show Ur Support TM u can reblog it [here](https://lesbianlura.tumblr.com/post/186964285438/now-complete-klance-30k-88-chapters) or retweet [here](https://twitter.com/science_lesbian/status/1160584019152474112?s=20)
> 
> i'll probably peace out pretty hard once school starts up, but here's my [tumblr](http://lesbianlura.tumblr.com) and my [twitter](http://twitter.com/science_lesbian) if you wanna keep an eye out for whatever else I might be writing (I have a 10k one-shot going up later this week, & eventually I'll have a couple zine pieces out), or if you're interested in 2 am posts consisting of either "gorls!??!?!?! im am gya?!?!??!" or "alluraaaaaajhfdbsdaaaaaaaaa"
> 
> I can't remember if I counted like, maybe nine major instances of symbolism in this final chapter? idk, but if ur a nerd n you yell about symbolism w me in the comments please know that i love you and you're entitled to like my firstborn or something!! 
> 
> also [KATE MADE AN ADASHI WEDDING BOARD](https://www.pinterest.com/nostalgicplant/adashi-wedding/?sender=377669256159985568&invite_code=fd439a50f4b84ccfa302996dc01aefa2) WHEN I ASKED HER ABT THEIR WEDDING???? YALL!!!!!!!!! ITS SO GOOD !!!!


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